Caution: here there be SPOILERS concerning the original games in the Fallout series
Blogger's Note: Repost of the original story due to date issues



Bethesda has destroyed a franchise. Fallout was dead, and was revered as a masterpiece of roleplaying, story and atmosphere. Now, with their monkeying about, the franchise is being ressurected, but this isn’t the same Fallout the old fans knew. Of course, we old fans were already aware of that, and we kept telling people and we kept criticizing from the very first day, through the first trailer, through the gameplay videos. Not that many listened to us. I can say now that Bethesda has destroyed the actual Fallout franchise and replaced it with their sad and pathetic version.


Good night, sweet prince wearing the Power Armor helmet.

How did Bethesda destroy Fallout? Their game is a success even before release, previews are glowing, people already call it GOTY, and players all over the world have a new found interest in the post-apocalyptic world of the franchise. Well, that’s where they’re wrong. This isn’t Fallout. This is a mash-up of several inspirations, ideas, gimmicks and tricks, but it is no Fallout. This world, as Bethesda has rendered it, makes no inherent sense. It has no sense.


Monty Python

What exactly did they do? I’ll start with an analogy. Monty Python, the famed British comedians, belong to the top tier of nonsensical comedy. Every act that somehow bears resemblance to their style is usually compared with Monty Python, to see if they are really trying to ape Monty Python or don't even know anything about them. Now, take the Postal series of games. These games have a type of humour that is considered vulgar and based on pop culture references. Besides the first game, where humour was only in the killing, and was a very dark humour at that, the other games introduced such things as weapons that fired cats, terrorists as enemies, the ability to piss on people, etc. Obviously, not everybody gets this kind of humour. I don’t really appreciate it, and while people may laugh, there isn’t a consensus that the Postal games’ brand of comedy is something with quality, so to speak, unlike the Monty Python brand of comedy. Because whether or not you like the kind of stuff Monty Python did, you have to recognize their quality, such as one might not like classical music but will recognize its place and quality in the world.


Hai, Cat Shooter.

Now, what Bethesda has done, is pick something of Monty Python quality, and debase it to the likes of the Postal games.

Imagine that one of your favorite franchises, one of your favorite characters, or one of your favorite worlds, or one of your favorite movies was being brought back from the dead. But instead of that magic, instead of that marvel, all that you see is rubbish. This happens almost every time they make a movie based on an old TV show, or they recreate said TV show in the modern days, or they remake a cartoon or a really good old movie. Hell, they even remake foreign movies so that they are more palatable to the supposedly ignorant consumer. This is just wrong to do.

That's what's happening with Fallout.



They got Fallout’s atmosphere wrong. I’ll start with the radio. While it makes sense that the Pipboy would have a radio, it makes no sense that a TV company (Galaxy News) that was broadcasting news in 2077 is still around playing 50s songs in 2277. Wasn’t it destroyed? I’ll refer to Fallout 2’s intro:

“Earth was nearly wiped clean of life. A great cleansing, an atomic spark struck by human hands, quickly raged out of control. Spears of nuclear fire rained from the skies. Continents were swallowed in flames and fell beneath the boiling oceans. Humanity was almost extinguished, their spirits becoming part of the background radiation that blanketed the earth.”

Yes, it's not directly stated that TV companies were destroyed, but the outlook is pretty bleak. The possibility that someone found the Galaxy News station and started broadcasting the signal again, or that they never stopped broadcasting is very poor. I wonder if we can find the Galaxy News station in the game!

The worst part of the radio is obscuring what should be the main soundtrack of the game: sounds of a vast emptyness, inspiring a sense of dread and insecurity. That's what the originals did, and it worked really well.

Why is there an Enclave radio? Weren’t they destroyed by the Chosen One in Fallout 2’s ending? Course they could say they got some remnants and they banded together and went to the East, to rule over Washington. This goes completely against their original plan of wiping out the humanity, which was almost 99% infected with FEV, a virus that turns people into mutants, or simply changes their DNA, without mutating them. Everybody that was outside the vaults when the nukes were launched is almost 100% sure to have been infected, including their offspring and the folks that left the vaults after the war (most of the Wasteland’s population, in fact). The Enclave’s plan was to wipe everybody out so that they, the uninfected pure humans, could repopulate the Earth. I sure hope to see some of this in the game, and an explanation why they have those sputnik look alikes flying around recruiting people. Or why they land their Vertibirds and then shoot up random guys dressed in vault suits (the player) instead of trying to befriend them and have them reveal their vault location (source of pure humans for repopulation). They didn't care for the Chosen One in Fallout 2 because they already had a precious vault full of humans! Could this be the secret of the Enclave in Fallout 3?


Watch out, its the Enclave!

People will call these pet peeves. Or say that I’m just grasping for criticism. Well, I am. The game deserves it. It isn’t just that the game isn’t turn based or in isometric view. It’s not that they completely ignored the previous games musical scores, from what we’ve heard so far. It’s not that they decided that cars would create mini nuclear explosions. Let me put it to you this way: everything that they are being praised for was already in the previous games. The good things, the setting, the vaults and their story, the dark humour, all of that was created by competent developers and writers 10 years ago. And where’s their accolades? Where does Bethesda keep referring what was their original idea and what was already there? They don’t, mostly. Most games journalists praise Bethesda for the setting, even when they mention the previous games. That makes me mad.


Pretty cool that the Pipboy 3000 comes builtin with a bottle cap counter, ready for the makeshift currency!

What is Bethesda bringing to the table? The unnecessary pip boy 3000, which takes up almost the entire forearm, instead of being the size of a watch, like the original game's Pipboy 2000, the Dad storyline and facial similarity with the player, the illogical gore (while the original Fallout’s had gore, and lots of it, the animations actually made sense! Punching a guy in the torso and watching all the limbs pop out, even with the bloody mess perk, is just silly). The fact that you get radiation from drinking water, but walking around blowing up the nuclear plants inside cars is fair game.


Power Fist is Powerful.

They ressurect the Enclave, they gather the Super Mutants after their trek across the Wastes to the East (happened at the end of Fallout 1), they go and make sure the Brotherhood of Steel ALSO journeys to the East (a part of it), but amidst all this, where are the nuclear typhoons? I sure remember old Tycho (or was it Cassidy?) talking about the nuclear typhoons that were wrecking the central part North America. I wish we’d get to see those, or at least hear the travelling bands (Mutants, BOS, Enclave) tell tales of these dangers.

What happened here is that Bethesda picked up the major Western-bound factions in the Fallout series and relocated them to the East, for whatever reason. I’m sure the game will have a cockamie explanation, but couldn’t they have imagined some other threat? Or reused the Western setting? Continued the story? Shown us the future New California Republic? Or Arroyo as a civilized bustling city?

All that I see of the game is either a poor imitation of what came before or an exageration. The mutants now look gigantic and brutish, completely devoid of humane features, besides the humanoid build. The 50’s design is being taken to the limit, one would think the war really WAS in the 1950s (2077 is the big year, actually). The Vaultboy is being pimped everywhere. I see lots of avatars with Vaultboy images nowadays, but where were these Fallout fans 2 years ago? Now everybody loves this setting. And they owe it all to Bethesda. The setting now seems to focus almost completely on propaganda / funny dark humour / nuclear stuff blowing up. The original games also had sadness, melancholy, feelings of despair. None of that is being touted about. No one gives a damn about that. I don’t see Bethesda talking about the ending to Fallout 1, and how the Vault Dweller had to leave his vault even though he saved it from impending doom. I see some stuff about a Dad leaving, and quests saying “find Dad”, and you playing a 19 year old person. None of that is gripping me. I don't see the seeds for a rewarding quest. But that's something to look out for when the game comes out, see how their tale holds up.

Then there’s VATS. Basically it's Bethesda saying “hello there Fallout fans, this here is how we play the game nowadays, we replaced a turn based isometric system for an FPS with a pause button!”. That makes me mad.


Look kids, the Vault Dweller can pause time!

Another nasty gripe I have has to do with this affirmation going around; I don’t know whether a Bethesda spokesperson or a journalist said it, that the original Fallout just wasn’t an FPS because the technology wasn’t there. And now Bethesda was setting it right. How can someone say this kind of idiocy? I see this being touted sometimes as a defense for Fallout 3. But do they know that Fallout was originally an adaptation of the GURPS roleplaying system? Sorta like how Baldur’s Gate is an adaptation of the D&D system. Of course, that was changed during the course of Fallout’s development, but the base was built with that in mind. The game started as a translation of pen and paper gameplay for the computer. This is part of what makes Fallout, Fallout. And it was completely gutted by Bethesda. There isn’t a trace of that left. And the new fans and the journalists and Bethesda keep saying how Fallout’s strength is the story, and that they got that right (they didn't, not the bits they revealed already, as I showed earlier). I don’t think people would be so happy if Halo 3 was a turn based isometric game. Sure, you have Halo Wars which is an RTS, not an FPS, but it is called Halo Wars. It IS a spinoff. It’s not Halo 4. But they keep touting Fallout FPS as Fallout 3. And that makes me mad.


The original game's pitch.

If the game had another name, maybe Fallout FPS, or was just called “Post Apocalyptic Shooter" or some other thing, maybe it would be interesting. But not like this. And perhaps what I hate the most really is seeing this positive buzz surrounding such a sad attempt at a Fallout sequel.


COMING SOON TO A CONSOLE NEAR YOU

Just a quick rundown of some more gripes with the game:

Technology
Why is Technology so different? I suppose the vault dwellers of Vault 101 got different pipboys than the ones in Vault 13 and Vault 8 because they were in the other side of the continent, and since the vaults were social experiments for long term space travel according to the Fallout Bible (compiled by Chris Avellone, MCA for the Fallout fans, and released in several PDFs with answers to emails), Vault-Tek or the government decided to give better toys to only the Eastern vaults.

As for the power armor, even though by 2242 the original Brotherhood of Steel only had the original Mk1 suits (not even the Mk2 suits used by the Enclave), this new Eastern Brotherhood of Steel must have somehow, during their long trek through nuclear typhoons and the other dangers of central north america, developed different versions of the power armor. Or they could have found them in bases similar to the Sierra Army Base in Fallout 2. It’s an explanation, sure, but a crappy one.

Gore
Probably due to radiation, the human body in the east coast is a fluctuating reality. If using your vault assisted targetting system, you may get a critical shot that will make your enemy do some kind of a loop in midair when he is hit. Or when you hit a person with your powerfist, their arms and head will pop out. Maybe some electric shock provokes immediate limb amputation.

Endings
I almost forgot! 300 endings? Fallout 1 and 2 had slideshow endings that combined the outcomes of the several cities into one ending, depending on wether you killed that city senseless or helped it through quests or didn't touch it at all, and all of that was one ending. This 300 ending exageration is probably just that: all the combinations of all the ending slideshows that you can get. But where was Bethesda explaining the details of these 300 endings?

Weapons
Seriously, does anyone really like the Vroom-vroom gun? It shoots rail spikes, and it does this awful train sound when it fires... Where was this in the previous games? Or the lunch-box shooter for that matter? What does this have to do with Fallout? Why Bethesda? Why must you keep inventing crap and recycling goodness mixing it all into a big ball of turd?

Mutants
I remember Mutants looking like this:


But not like this:


There's something else that gets me the wrong way with how the mutants look. Marcus, a mutant from Fallout 2, travels to the East in search for the remnants of the Master's army, according to the Fallout Bible. If Bethesda remembered him and placed him in the game, how is he gonna look? Like his original handsome mutantness and then look completely out of place with the rest of the mutants, or will he be retrofitted to look like these awful "mutants" Bethesda is pimping around?


Marcus.

Here's a scan from the Vault Dweller guide handed out at PAX 2008:



It is stated in the guide that these drawings are "predictions" of the mutations that can happen due to the radiation out there in the Wasteland. These predictions are really accurate, they look exactly the same as the monsters in the screenshots! Great work, Vault-Tek!

Too bad that most of these monsters look entirely different than their original counterparts in the original games. Still, glad to see the CENTAUR getting some love, it's pratically identical. Too bad the Behemoth and Mirelurk King don't resemble anything I've seen anywhere in the series.


I saw a Mirelurk the other day...

Death of Pipboy
Oh yeah, Bethesda also completely eliminated the Pipboy, this chirpy fellow was the one adorning the Pipboy 2000, NOT the Vaultboy.



Abuse of the 50s look
More proof they have no idea what they're doing:

1950's classic Rockabilly gangs, living it up inside Vault 101. Guess the Vaults didn't have any more movies besides 50s stuff, and the bullies decided to emulate James Dean and friends. Probably the only decent looking screenshot I could find of the game, actually.

Final Thoughts:
I appreciate that because of all this buzz lots of people are experiencing the first games, and loving them. I welcome gladly all these new Fallout fans. It really is the best of this whole situation, the old games are getting some more attention, and they sure deserve it.

I'd like to thank No Mutants Allowed and Duck and Cover for most of the images and the Fallout wiki for being the best source of information concerning the series.


I hate you Fallout 3.