Posts Tagged ‘fallout 3’

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Fallout 3: Final Thoughts

Friday, August 7th, 2009

Yes, I know – I should be moving on to new and exciting games and reviewing them for you guys. I have that long queue and both Crysis and Bioshock are standing right behind me and tapping me on the shoulder as I launch Fallout 3 once again.

That’s the problem with these immersive, sandbox games from Bethesda – I tend to lose myself in them completely. I mean I am still not done with Morrowind and Oblivion – there is still lot’s of content I have not messed around with in these games. Fallout 3 is my most recent obsession. And I’m suspecting that it will be the most short lived one. I mean, look at this:

My Bobblehead Collection

My Bobblehead Collection

I already have all the Bobbleheads! That’s sort of the indicative of my state of completion within the game. I’d take a screen shot of my quest screen or my map but they both only show a fraction of available items. So my bobblehead collection is sort of the only visual evidence of my progress.

I did all the marked side quests in the game. Every single one – I checked. I did most of the unmarked side quests and the ones I didn’t complete, I didn’t really care for to begin with. I was surprised that this was all there was to this game. I mean yeah, there are bunch of locations I still haven’t visited but just wandering around collecting random pieces of loot is no longer so much fun – especially now, when 80% of my weapons and apparel are actually named, unique artifacts which do more damage or have additional rules that make them better than their generic counterparts.

When you play Fallout the way I play it (ie. like Oblivion) you will quickly notice that it is virtually devoid of long quest chains. Or rather there are only two of them in the whole game. The first one is of course the Main Quest™, while the other is assisting Moira Brown in writing the Survival Guide. All the other missions are one-off, stand alone adventures. This means that once you do them and collect your reward, you have to do some wandering to stumble upon more of them.

This is very different from Oblivion and Morrowind which were all about quest chains. These games featured guilds and organizations you could join. Each one of these had 15-20 quests you could do for them. These quests would increase your standing with the given faction, and eventually put you in a position of leadership giving you some neat perks such as weekly income, a safe house, re-spawning generic followers you could hire and etc. This was great because it helped to structure the otherwise free-form sandbox game. You could for example decide to join the Thieves Guild or the Fighters Guild and work on their quests exclusively for a while. Or you could join several organizations and then knock their missions out simultaneously. There was always something to do, and you always knew where to go to get more work.

Fallout 3 doesn’t have guilds or factions and no such structure. When you run out of jobs the only thing you can do is to pick an empty looking spot in the map, and head out there and chase the arrows on your radar to find marked locations where there might be quest starting items, quest giving NPC’s, loot or bobbleheads. Barring that, you just have to hit the Fallout Wiki and look up quest locations.

I sort of wish there were actual long quest chains you could perform for each of the major in-game factions. Yes, it’s true that the main settlements such as Megaton, Rivet City, Little Lamplight and Underworld do have a high concentration of quest givers. You can pick up a lot of side-jobs in those places – which is great. But these places are few and far in between.

What I would love to see in this game is the good old, faction based quest chains. Which factions you ask? Take your pick. There are plenty of them:

  1. The Brotherhood
  2. The Outcasts
  3. Reily’s Rangers
  4. Temple of the Union
  5. Oasis druids
  6. Dr. Lesko
  7. The Family
  8. Mr. Tenpenny
  9. Abraham Washington
  10. Dukov
  11. Republic of Dave
  12. Daring Dashwood
  13. Canterbury Commons

Think about it – all these factions and/or individuals tend to be involved in one or two quests. Some give you a repeatable “bring me lots of X and I will give you Y” tasks but these are very boring. I mean, those are classic MMO quests and no one actually does them in a single player RPG unless they are low level and strapped for cash. If you are high level, it is much more profitable to simply “do moar quests”.

Each of the factions on the list could easily have 5-6 unique, optional quests of their own which would give you some extra loot, benefits or perks. Maybe you could get additional houses in the other towns – or at least free a bed. Maybe you could get free heeling, or free ammo. Or perhaps you would get a unique nickname in that city – people would greet you as their hero, savior and etc… In any case, completing a long quest chain and getting reputation with a faction is much more satisfying than doing bunch of random quests in a single location.

My other gripe was with the main quest. As soon as I started doing it, I was done. It is almost astonishingly short. You see, in my journeys across the wasteland I visited Rivet City and talked to Dr. Lee before visiting the GNR building effectively skipping that part of the quest. I also liberated Little Lamplight kids from Paradise Falls, and visited their caverns before even reaching Rivet city. When I finally started doing the main quest, I merely had to do 6 short quests in order to see the ending animation.

These quests were fun. Tranquility Lane was a trip, Vault 87 was cool, and I had a blast breaking out of Raven Rock. It was also cool following Liberty Prime in the final assault of the enclave forces. But but it was so short and so rushed!

I remember that in Morrowind the main quest would be periodically interrupted and your quest giver would tell you to go take some jobs, and gain a few levels until you are ready. They didn’t want you to rush through to the end of the game without actually getting a taste for the wold and doing some side quests. Both Oblivion and Fallout 3 do the exact opposite. Your main quest is of an utmost importance and the NPC’s keep reminding you that you not to waste any time. However if you follow their guidance and not take on any side quest (time is of the essence after all) you will finish the game in 2-3 evenings. The only way to actually get the value out of the game is to ignore the main quest completely until you have done all your side quests. And there is a lot of value in this game. It’s just less than I expected. Oblivion was much, much bigger and had many more quests you could take. I’m not even going to talk about Morrowind which I’ve been playing for years there are still whole quest chains I have never even touched.

To sort of extend my enjoyment of this game, I got Broken Steel, The Pit and Point Lookout DLC’s the other day. I’m not really that interested in the Anchorage battle so I skipped that particular addon. I will probably comment on these expansion packs at some point. But since you are probably sick and tired of my Fallout ramblings I will likely try to squeeze in another game review somewhere in between.

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Magic Item Equivalents in Modern and SF Settings

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

One of the things that I really enjoy doing in computer RPG games is tweaking and min/maxing my character. Yup, I admit it – deep down inside, I guess I’m still a munchkin who wants to play the ultimate, indefeasible übermensch. I tend to grind my characters until I reach a level cap, and then spend days figuring out the most unbalanced combination of magic items that would give me the edge over my opponent.

For example in Morrowind, I had a character with a set of items that gave her constant effect 75 chameleon. This meant that she could run up to the enemy, punch him in the face and then crouch (go into sneak mode) and virtually disappear off the enemy’s radar. They would just look around and then start running away. I also once made a suite of 100 sanctuary which made me invulnerable to all physical attacks (an being a Breton I was also 60% resistant to magical attacks). Not even mentioning my Boots of Blinding Speed hack which allowed me to increase my speed to over 200 without the blindness.

This was one of the reasons why I love that game so much. If your had enough money, and trapped souls (and I always did, thanks to the magic of the in-game console) you could create crazy combinations like that. Oblivion’s enchanting system was much more balanced (or nerfed) but I still found some amusing combos (enchant a dagger with Drain Life 100 for 1 sec, and some damage dealing spell – then run up to an opponent and start stabbing. You can kill just about anything in the game with this combo if you stab fast enough – you can sometimes get 2-3 hits before the initial effect wares off dealing upwards of 300 damage).

Of course, I would never subject the people in my gaming group to such a character when playing regular, pen and paper variety of RPG games. In fact, in most groups we would usually abandon high level characters after they became too powerful or reboot the campaigns if the company would become to famous or to wealthy. Single player Computer RPG’s however do not have a real live GM who could adjust the balance of the game on the fly and improvise. They don’t have other people who actually want to “role play” and have a good time. The game world is set in stone. So part of the fun is to create a character and see how far you can take him. You can unleash your deeply seated munchkin ueges and run with them. Part of the process of building up your character is of course gear management.

Most of CRPG’s have an astonishing variety of weapons, armors and talismans you can equip your characters with. If you play your cards right, you can easily end up with a nasty combination that gives you and edge in combat. The more complex the system, and the more effects are there, the easier it is to abuse.

This is why I was a little bit disappointed that Fallout 3 did not have anything resembling an enchanting system or magic. This is probably due to the fact that Bethseda was trying to be more or less faithful to the previous Fallout games, which is understandable. And I can’t really complain that much, since they did include a large collection of unique named items that are more powerful that the generic versions of the same. Sadly, these artifacts are rather rare, and they offer nowhere near the variety of special effects and bonuses a fully fledged magic item system would.

This got me thinking. How could we emulate such a system in a RPG game set in modern or science fiction setting? Having rare named items is fine, but I want something more. Something closer to the commonly found magic items in a classic, fantasy RPG.

The answer to the question lies in Clarkes third law: we use technology. After all, sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Here are some ideas:

DIY Weapons

Fallout 3 had a great idea of introducing weapons you could make using common household items after finding the right schematic. I loved the flaming “Shishkebab” sword, and the dart gun for example. I just wish there were more of them. Fallout only had 5 or 6 different weapons that you could create this way. I’d love to see this mechanic used to it’s full extent – allowing you to create makeshift armor and weapons from random items.

Tinkering and Upgrades

A logical extension of the idea above would be to open up all weapons and armor for upgrades. For example, you could reinforce your flak jacket with armored plates, or install targeting sensors on your helmet. Some fantasy games introduce socketed items into which you can put in enchanted gems. We could use the same idea, just for weapon and armor upgrades.

In fact, this is the exact system Knights Of The Old Republic games used for most of it’s gear. The socket design is easy to implement, easy to grasp and usually opens up lots of upgrade paths and possibilities.

Alternatively you could use a modular design for most of the items. Each weapon could be broken down into 3-4 pieces and each of them could potentially be attached to another weapon. This would allow you to do cool things like refitting your rifle with a longer barrel for increased accuracy, or making your submachine gun shoot high caliber, armor piercing bullets.

Cybernetics

For futuristic settings cybernetics are the next logical addition. Getting performance enhancing implants would be just like collecting enchanted rings, pedants and talismans. And because of Clarke’s Third Law there is no limit as to what kind off effects these things could offer. You could have targeting arrays, reflex busting implants, armor plates underneath your skin, exoskeleton that would boost your strength and carrying capacity or even a hidden flamer that would allow you to shoot fireballs out of your wrists. The sky is the limit.

Nano-Technology

Finally, we have the ultimate magic-like technology – nanomachines. These things are pure science fiction for now, and we really don’t know what could be their limits. What we do know, is that they are tiny, invisible and can manipulate mater at the molecular level.

The characters would simply need to find or buy a small box with the specialized nano-bots inside and open it. The bots would then crawl all over them, and create their own colonies living off the hosts biological waste. It could take them a little while before they are in full operating capacity, and you may need some sort of a skill to be able to control them.

They could be used for healing, reinforcing your skin to make it bulletproof, making you invisible by bending the light a certain way, giving you extra sensory perception or a wide variety of buffs and bonuses. You could even be able to temporaroily impart these buffs onto your company members. If I’m not mistaken, Anarchy Online had a system like this – but I have only played that game for about an hour or two so I can’t be sure.

How would you add some magic to an RPG game set in a modern or SF setting?

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Fallout 3: Side Quest Rant

Friday, July 31st, 2009

When I reviewed Fallout 3, I did some complaining about the writing. Not all quests in the game are bad though. I wanted to take a closer look at two selected side quests: one that annoyed me, and one that I really liked and compare them. Needless to say, this article will contain major spoilers for some of the aforementioned side quests. It will however not spoil the main quest for you.

Tenpenny Towers Terrorist

Tenpenny Tower is one of the few remaining buildings in the wasteland that is still standing. Alistar Tenpenny, it’s owner managed to clean it up very well and the place is surprisingly free of trash, rubble and dirt. It is a lovely place to live, and unsurprisingly it is also very exclusive gated community populated by rich snobs. How do you become a rich snob in a post apocalyptic wasteland? I don’t know, and the game doesn’t tell you.

You can find out that one of the residents is a former slaver from Paradise Falls who swindled out her compatriots out of a huge sum of money. Another is famous adventurer Daring Dashwood who actually has his own radio play on GNR. Others are somehow rich by default. One of the golden rules of this community is “no Ghouls allowed”. Presumably because Ghouls are scary, they smell bad (no, they do) and etc… The game goes out of the way to portray the inhabitants of the tower as bunch of bigoted racists.

That rule was put into effect because a group of local Ghouls wanted to buy their way into the community. They apparently had the money to afford to live there, but were turned away. Their leader, Roy Philips gets really fired up about this and threatens to take the tower by force if he is not allowed in.

The Tenpenny residents take this threat very seriously, and the local security wants to hire someone to make sure Roy is out of the picture. This is where you come in. Your mission is to take out Philips and his gang before they can organize and do something reckless.

When you find Roy, you can talk to him and his accomplices about the situation. The Ghouls that follow him are actually nice and reasonable people. They are however taken in by Roy’s strength of Character and his charisma and are willing to do whatever he deems necessary to ensure their survival.

Philips himself however seems unstable. He is a violent man with a chip on his shoulder. It’s clear that he harbors some deeply seethed grudge against humans, and never misses a chance to insult one. When he is done mocking you, he will ask you to help him infiltrate the tower bu unlocking the underground passages. He plans to let the feral ghouls into the building and simply sit back and watch them butcher the defenseless residents.

We have a name for people like him – Roy Philips is a terrorist. He has no qualms about butchering all these innocent people. Yes, they are racist bigots but that does not necessarily mean they need to die.

At that point you can take three paths:

  1. You can side with Tenpenny residents and kill Roy and his friends
  2. You can side with Roy and help him attack the tower
  3. You can go back to Mr. Tenpenny and negotiate on behalf of Roy

There are no other alternatives. Since I was playing a good character siding with Roy was out of the question for obvious reasons. Killing him also seemed iffy. While I wouldn’t have a problem killing Roy by himself, the quest demanded that I also take out his two accomplices. I couldn’t do that – they were nothing but nice to me. If you do take this path, however the game will award you bad karma.

Therefore I picked the nonviolent route, even though I knew it was not the best idea. The people there did not like Ghouls, and Roy Philips did not like “smootskins”. I knew he would be a problem, but nevertheless I got him inside in exchange for good Karma. I hoped that the tight security in the tower would keep him in check. I was wrong.

As soon as you leave the tower, Roy Philips takes out Alister Tenpenny and then kills all human residents out of the tower. Note that the people who got slaughtered are the same people who agreed to accept the Ghouls into their midst. They were not Ghoul haters – they were far from it. I convinced all the truly prejudiced residents to move out as part of the quest. So Roy slaughtered the same people who have shown him acceptance and hospitality. His friends are just as guilty for allowing him to go through with it (or actively helping him to accomplish the slaughter).

This quest is purposefully set up to result in death of innocent people. No matter which path you take, someone nice will end up dead. In retrospect I realized that killing Philips and his friends would be the lesser evil – at least compared to the mass slaughter of the innocent residents. I especially felt bad for poof old Dashwood who was a genuinely nice guy. But the game punishes you for taking that path, and rewards you for enabling Roys genocidal tendencies.

I don’t know… I just felt like the writers specifically went out of their way to confuse and annoy me on this. What was the message they were trying to get across here? That you are a chump and a pussy for trying to resolve the situation in a non-violent matter?

I think what happened here is that they tried to shoehorn this quest into the good vs evil template a little bit to hard. There is really no karma neutral option here – you either help Roy against your better judgment like a good boy scout would, or you take him out like a hardened mercenary with no heart.

The Oasis

The Oasis is a secluded valley surrounded by high cliffs close to the North edge of the map. It can be difficult to find, which is a pity considering the fact it is actually a good quest. This hidden Valley is actually a lush green paradise with growing trees, green grass and blooming flowers. It exists because of a special Ghoul named Harold. At some point in his life, he entered some sort of symbiosis with a small tree that started growing out of his head. Initially it didn’t bother him so he just kept it there. In the end however, the tree outgrew him and Harold became rooted to the spot and unable to move. As the tree matured however it started creating strange seed pods which gave the start to the Oasis. Each seed would grow into a tree, a bush or a flower even though the soil was arid and devoid of nutrients. Eventually people found the little Oasis that grew around Harold and started worshiping him as a living god (even though he asked them not to).

When you reach the Oasis, Harold will ask you to kill him as he is tired and frustrated of being rooted into the ground and unable to do anything. It is a mercy killing, and he really makes a good case to justify it. However if you talk to his worshipers you will quickly realize it is not as simple as that. For example, a little girl who was born in the Oasis tells you that Harold is her best friend, and that when she has a bad dream she goes to visit him and sleeps between his roots. If you can mercy-kill Halrold after that your heart must be made out of stone.

Fortunately you are given an alternative. There seems to be a schism among the worshipers. Some think that the Oasis should be kept a secret forever and that the growth of the seed pods must be inhibited. Other group thinks that the Oasis is a gift for all of humanity, and the growth of the seed pods should be accelerated so that the lush garden overgrows it’s borders and spreads into the wasteland quicker.

Harold will allow you access to his heart which is located in the underground cavern system below the Oasis. Once you reach it, you will be able to either destroy it (killing Harold), apply special inhibiting sap to it (stopping the production of seed pods) or apply the special liniment (to speed up their production). Strangely enough, you can only do one of these things. For example, if you apply the sap, you won’t be able to destroy the heart anymore.

This is an interesting moral dilemma because unlike the Roy Phillips case (where each choice is wrong) each choice has both positive and negative ramifications. Harold is slowly going insane, and it is not difficult to imagine his suffering. Killing him would be an act of mercy. But it would also negatively affect his worshipers who rely on his guidance. It will probably also deeply affect the little girl who treats Harold not as a God but as a close friend.

Inhibiting the growth of the seed pods will keep the Oasis safe from intruders – or at least safer than before. But it means that the miracle of it’s creation will remain contained locally. And who knows if without constant re-seeding the oasis won’t dry up and be reclaimed by the wasteland.

On the other hand accelerating their growth will expose Harold and his group to outsiders who will follow the traces of green down to the source. Who knows what will happen to them when raiders or super mutants decide to pay them a visit. Or what if someone like Alister Tenpenny finds it and decides to exploit it for profit?

Then again, is it right to contain the Oasis? After all Harold’s strange mutation might one day help to make the wasteland green again. Harold’s condition should be studied to see if it can be replicated. If it would be possible to create more such trees (preferably without a ghoul bonded to them) it would be a great alternative to the illusive GECK technology.

I chose to accelerate the seed growth, and was able to convince Harold to stick around for the good of his worshipers. The quarrel amongst the Treeminders ended an both sides accepted my decision knowing that the Oasis won’t outgrow it’s borders overnight. This resulted in good karma.

I played with other alternatives, and the only time I was punished with a karma penalty was when I set Harold on fire after learning that it was one of his biggest fears. And let’s face it – that was kind of a jerk move.

This quest works because it offers you a tough choice between several alternatives, none of each is clearly good or evil. The writers did not try to shoehorn it into the good/evil template and left it open ended. It is up to you to decide what is best for Harold, the Oasis and the Capital Wasteland itself.

Why couldn’t the Tenpenny Towers quest be structured this way? Why couldn’t we have an extra option to talk Roy out of his crazy idea of living in Tenpenny tower and escorting him to Underworld which is probably the only place a human hater like Roy could live without getting into trouble. We could make that to be the good karma option, and make the other peaceful resolution to be karma neutral. In that context, the death of innocent people wouldn’t cause a bewildering shock and a feeling that the game just pulled a fast one on you. I mean, yeah – it would still be surprising and shocking. But not so much out of place. After all, it would be your fault – you have misjudged Roy’s character and his ability to leave peacefully among humans.

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