Bethesda's game announcements (another BlakeyTweets topic)
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Find in the lore where it says they are the same people 200+ years later. These are new generations of people.
Or, where in the Fallout games is an NPC or character older than 200 years and still living? (Other than Mr. House in New Vegas) Cause I do not know.
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Or, where in the Fallout games is an NPC or character older than 200 years and still living?
The guys being tortured in the VR vault in Fallout 3, as mentioned above.
Also the scientists at the "Big MT", but I guess since they extracted their brains into jars, they're immortal? Or something?
Mr. House is actually the only one they actually bothered to explain away.
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Good point, I forgot about the VR experiment. If I were to try to explain that one, I would say something along the lines that they were in the VR pods the whole time, which I presume to be some kind of stasis pod.
Same with the Brains, but how they have the technology to extract brains from people but not miniaturize technology is kinda beyond me.
Eh, that's a stretch though.
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In the first game, you leave the vault twenty years later
You leave over 80 years after the bombs dropped (2161, while the war was in 2077). What game did you play? Nobody there remembers life before the bombs.
How did your Vault last two hundred years with only the limited maintenance that the poorly trained people inside could provide?
Remember that it's all lamp tech, zero ICs, repairable with a bunch of duct tape and a soldering iron. And not all the vaults were designed to last forever - it's easy to assume that those which did were better budgeted, and housed at least some knowledgeable people who could pass their skills on. Hell, Vault 13 would have probably lasted those 200 years if they had that spare water purification chip that got misplaced.
Consider the people topside, why are they still using caps as currency, when most caps should have deteriorated to nothing already, and means of producing coins or even digital banking should be available?
Because there's no real authority that would vouch for the coins' value (we've had this discussion before, haven't we...). Where such an authority exists (NCR, Legion), people have moved on to more convenient methods of trade, but for the Wasteland overall, bottle caps are like gold - not terribly hard to find, but sparse and apparently hard enough to counterfeit.
Consider the technology, why are they stuck with the weird mix of retro screens and advanced artificial intelligence from two hundred years prior?
The Fallout timeline branches out somewhere in the 50s as far as technical progress is concerned. That's the whole shtick of the universe. The progress went a bit awkwardly (again - no integrated circuits), but that was before the war.
Consider the towns, why are they still squatting in ruins instead of having rebuilt and covered the ruins with new buildings?
Where they did, they did (Junktown, for example, or Brotherhood of Steel). I suppose rebuilding the whole production chain out of scraps is not feasible enough. You can argue that, but... meh, I can suspend my disbelief.
Back to the Vaults, could ten generations (giving twenty years per generation) have really spent their entire lives in a hole in the ground with ten to a hundred other people as their sole company?
Each vault housed a thousand people. You don't see that due to conservation of detail, but I think it's in the FO Bible.
Why didn't they produce any music, art, technology, new clothes, or anything in two hundred years?
In vaults? Lack of supplies, probably. You don't exactly stash canvases and musical instruments when you need to provide food.
Where did they stuff all their dead?
Dunno. I'm guessing "food processors".
How did they control birth rates?
Dunno either, but I'm guessing "somewhere between China and Ancient Sparta". Those Overseers you meet are not the nicest people.
Even the people guiding the conspiracy would have died and been replaced a few times.
So? Certainly nobody in the Vaults knew that. As far as they were concerned, the outside was uninhabitable for the next 200 years, and that's it. The point of a social experiment is that the people you're experimenting on don't have any idea about that.
Of course, you could have visitors from the outside, but given that they'd probably be either raiders or supermutants, you're not going outside either way.
The guys being tortured in the VR vault in Fallout 3, as mentioned above.
Suspended animation kinda shit. SCIENCE!
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Because there's no real authority that would vouch for the coins' value (we've had this discussion before, haven't we...). Where such an authority exists (NCR, Legion), people have moved on to more convenient methods of trade, but for the Wasteland overall, bottle caps are like gold - not terribly hard to find, but sparse and apparently hard enough to counterfeit.
Yes, that's the world the game presents. But it's been 200 years. WHY is there still no authority? Consider the changes the US went through between 1776 and 1976. And that was without comparable technology. Even if parts of the country are irradiated, people adapt and it's back to business as usual. And you still don't explain how those bottle caps would survive rusting away to nothing, which is a physical process. Just look at what happens to cars left out without maintenance a few years.
The Fallout timeline branches out somewhere in the 50s as far as technical progress is concerned. That's the whole shtick of the universe. The progress went a bit awkwardly (again - no integrated circuits), but that was before the war.
I don't mind the starting point. They diverged, and when the war started they were more advanced in some respects, less so in others. I mind that 200 years later, there's been no progress. And this is despite all the technology being functional and repairable. Consider the technological advancements between 1815 and 2015. Or 1615 and 1815.Where they did, they did (Junktown, for example, or Brotherhood of Steel). I suppose rebuilding the whole production chain out of scraps is not feasible enough.
It's been 200 years! The whole production chain was built from scratch in less than that, including the developing the technology! How could recovering it, or even rebuilding it from scratch with all the tech available (including robots to handle labor), take longer?In vaults? Lack of supplies, probably. You don't exactly stash canvases and musical instruments when you need to provide food.
And yet you have the manufacturing capability to produce clothes for a thousand people for two hundred years? Besides, we had culture before we had the means to persist it. You can make music just by banging pipes and singing. You could scratch words into walls. Share spoken stories. And besides besides, you are educating generations of people. How do you manage to educate people without tools for them to write? They had schools -> they had art supplies (even if they weren't intended as art supplies).Dunno. I'm guessing "food processors".
Incinerators, actually (I did a bit of research).My point is, you can't maintain a "post-apocalyptic" setting in time forever. You can only push it for a few years, 40 or 60 at most. At some point, people either start having babies, or there are no more people. And babies are high maintenance. So either the disaster is terrible enough that people can't recover, meaning that a hundred years later there's no more people, or the disaster allows for people to form stable communities, at which point it's no longer a survivalist scenario, it's just business as usual in a place that had something bad happen once.
Two hundred years after the zombie apocalypse, people will not be hiding from the zombies. They'll be using them as cheap labor (a week later, according to Shaun of the Dead).
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One of my favorite post-apocalypse movie is The Postman, because it demonstrates exactly your points. (Yes seriously. I like that movie. Sue me.)
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Consider the changes the US went through between 1776 and 1976. And that was without comparable technology.
Also with orders of magnitude more people, at least in the beginning. Also with, you know, soil to grow food on, and not having to worry about a raider blowing your brains off for a rusty cap.
As I said, maybe the progress is a bit sluggish, but it's not as much of a stretch as you say. Think "900AD vs. 1100AD", not "1779 vs 1976".
And you still don't explain how those bottle caps would survive rusting away to nothing, which is a physical process.
Maybe they moved to stainless steel. Jeesh.
I mind that 200 years later, there's been no progress. And this is despite all the technology being functional and repairable.
Again - you really don't have a lot of people out there, not all of them are technical (and even less so years after the war - technology knowledge is mostly arcane to common folk) and they're mostly more busy protecting their asses and finding something to put on their plate more than developing technology. And the ones that don't, like BoS, are not exactly willing to share it with any other guy from the wastes.
It's not like the economy is stable enough to have a patent office or anything.
And yet you have the manufacturing capability to produce clothes for a thousand people for two hundred years?
I guess that was higher on the priority list. Remember, Vault-Tec didn't particularly care about such trifles as people not going insane.
Some art survived anyway - you have a violinist in F3, there's the whole Zion tribal culture in NV - but I'm guessing that, again, you don't care much about it when there are radscorpions to shoot.
And there's even a fucking barber in vault 101.
So either the disaster is terrible enough that people can't recover, meaning that a hundred years later there's no more people, or the disaster allows for people to form stable communities, at which point it's no longer a survivalist scenario, it's just business as usual in a place that had something bad happen once.
But there's still shit going on after the war that you're missing. The whole society has crumbled, and the mentality has changed from social to savage for lots and lots of people. That's another shtick of Fallout universe - most people aren't concerned with the overall state of the world as much as about surviving to see another day.
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But there's still shit going on after the war that you're missing.
That it's just a video game?
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But there's still shit going on after the war that you're missing. The whole society has crumbled, and the mentality has changed from social to savage for lots and lots of people. That's another shtick of Fallout universe - most people aren't concerned with the overall state of the world as much as about surviving to see another day.
Look, I'm telling you why the society depicted doesn't work, and you're telling me "but that's how they designed the game!". I know that's how they designed the game, that's what I'm complaining about!
Think "900AD vs. 1100AD"
There was a lot more technological advancement in that period than people realize. Here's a site that highlights some. Go to the bottom of this list (1-1000) and the beginning of the next (1000-1500) Some highlights: 900 - Lens, 935 - Golf, 953 - Fountain Pen, 960 - Wheel Clock, 970 - Hospital, 1000 - Cauterization, Portable Flamethrower, Cheque, 1020 - Parabolic Mirror, 1100 - Water Powered Hammer Forge.And that's just technology.
Maybe they moved to stainless steel. Jeesh.
Why would you make bottle caps able to last two hundred years? They're designed to be disposable.and not having to worry about a raider blowing your brains off for a rusty cap.
Why are there still raiders around? Where do they get their equipment, troops, repairs, etc? The raiders need to have developed stable settlements to be able to continue raiding two centuries after the bombs. At which point, raiding becomes pointless. You just call yourself the government and be done with it. Raiders, cannibals, and all that good stuff that post-apocalyptic scenarios love to use only make sense immediately after the disaster. Not a century later.
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I want Fallout 4 to feature Kimmy Schmidt
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All I know is that they've had 200 years to clean up the exact rooms they are living in, and I still see trash, debris, unpatched walls, as if no one developed a skill to repair a wall.
I mean, at bare minimum they should be able to fire clay. Hell, they have the ability to melt metal (repairing guns to 100% with enough skill), and yet they barely can patch together buses and plane parts.
I mean, given you have fully functioning facilities that are abandoned, no one can even mix paint.
That was the biggest immersion breaker for me too. It's been 200 years, there's a thriving civilization, and yet you still haven't cleaned up garbage and skeletons around the corner. Also, where's agriculture? You won't survive 2 centuries on canned food. I just don't buy it.
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Also, where's agriculture? You won't survive 2 centuries on canned food.
I always wonder about how dwarves in fantasy settings manage to survive. The only answer seems to be trade. But then you think about stuff like large groups of orcs or goblins in caves and there's just no way.
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There was a lot more technological advancement in that period than people realize....Lens, 935 - Golf, 953 - Fountain Pen, 960 - ...
Progress is not a smooth road.
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New is not necessarily good.
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Still, took a long time to get from the Golf 953 to the Golf GTi
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I always wonder about how dwarves in fantasy settings manage to survive. The only answer seems to be trade. But then you think about stuff like large groups of orcs or goblins in caves and there's just no way.
Well, there are things that grow underground...
Filed under: tasty tasty fungi
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And you still don't explain how those bottle caps would survive rusting away to nothing
Do you find them in the mud? Or are most of them in people's pockets or on bottles in storage? Maybe people keep them clean and dry.
>Also, where's agriculture? You won't survive 2 centuries on canned food.
I always wonder about how dwarves in fantasy settings manage to survive.
Dwarf bread can last two centuries, easily.
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That requires a skill in ESO? "Hey, what's your drinking liquid out of a container level?"
No, but there's an economy that is more balanced than it was in Skyrim. You don't find potions everywhere at the amount that you need, and ingredients cost a lot more if bought from other players. So it's a good idea to invest in being able to make something in exchange. That's what happens when you have an actual economy as opposed to, "Oh dragonborn, it's you. In that case, it will be only $1".
I may have, but if I did it was a drop.
And you get those, but there's two ways to get the exact thing you want. You can PvP and buy from the PvP merchants, or you can invest in smithing your own bow, and it's a lot easier and cheaper than in Skyrim.
Nope, and that doesn't require skills, which is the point of scrolls over spell tomes.
My point being that using a scroll is no different from using a class spell. And that scrolls actually gained from having destruction leveled. As well as enchantments lasting longer if you were high in destruction.
I miss those levels of interaction. I wish they'd give in to overlapping benefits, so it would be worthwhile to train in weapons you won't always use. Because in real life, it's good to know more than one discipline.
It's like, it would be good if I had some practice firing a pistol, even if I didn't own one. Because the last thing I want to do is be in a situation where I have to use one, and \end up shooting someone behind me.\
Why would I cook food? It heals like 5 hitpoints
Apparently you didn't cook food. Those were the basic foods. The advanced foods did some cool stuff, like buffing you, increasing recovery, etc.
I just went around casting leech seed and bone spirit
I cast the circle powers and used a mace, like a real D&D cleric.
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Which means that they only use the more superficial aspects of the franchise.
If only the alternatives, like Risen, were mechanically good.
how they have the technology to extract brains from people but not miniaturize technology is kinda beyond me.
The device they used was the size of an industrial complex?
spare water purification chip
Making the whole plot of Fallout 3 pointless.
conservation of detail
You know, fast travel makes a whole lot more sense. I mean people complain about walking Skyrim now. Imagine if it were lore sized.
"food processors".
something something... is people!
Suspended animation kinda shit. SCIENCE!
If only people criticized Portal 2 to this level.
I'm trying to find where, on the Fallout page, this content is supposed to be scientifically accurate.
WHY is there still no authority?
There is a President. But you know, with civilization so sparse and no forms of long range travel, it's like the pioneer days all over again. Local areas would, at best, have sheriffs, who could easily say they are official, then do stupid selfish things like consolidate power. There's a reason we had so many outlaws in American history, and not all of them were evilTM
I mind that 200 years later, there's been no progress
You know that group that's dedicated to recovering old tech?
Yeah, they've admitted that they still can't reproduce it.Try giving our best technology to the Wright brothers, without a blueprint, and ask them to reproduce it.
For years in WW2, Japan fighter planes only used wood and fabric, despite cooperating with the Germans that had metal planes.How could recovering it, or even rebuilding it from scratch with all the tech available (including robots to handle labor), take longer?
You know, at one point China was more advanced than a lot of the world. With better boats, and even a multi-explosive-firing rig. Then they fell behind, and now they can't even build a stealth plane HAVING blueprints.
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Dwarf bread can last two centuries, easily
Makes a good weapon too, which helps with the aforementioned goblins.
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There was a lot more technological advancement
Also, a lot more people who had their most basic needs satisfied so that they could actually get around to inventing shit. Do I need to page Maslow for you?
bottle caps
Surplus of stainless metals. A new formula eating through old caps. Or maybe they just did. Look, you have a world where ten-feet scorpions roam the land because SCIENCE! and you're arguing bottle caps.
raiders around
Why wouldn't there be? Every society has its thugs and lowlifes, and Fallout's doesn't exactly care about resocialization in addition to law being nearly nonexistent throughout most of the wasteland. I'm guessing they feed and loot on the more advanced communities.
agriculture?
It's a barren fucking wasteland! There's some crops in the NCR (which also, incidentally, is what you guys seem to imagine the whole society would be), and people keep brahmin around, but it's mostly a hunter/gatherer society.
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I always wonder about how dwarves in fantasy settings manage to survive. The only answer seems to be trade.
Let's shoot for "INB4 @ben_lubar" and point out that in DF they farm mushrooms underground.
Edit: Someone else mentioned stuff growing underground but neither DF nor BL were mentioned.
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The mushrooms grow better if you talk to them in lojban. Of course you can write a script in Go that'll start a DF game, talk to the mushrooms in lojban, then create a video of them in an obscure format and as an added bonus it'll post large screenshots and complaints that nothing does a good job of dealing with the super-obscure video format here, saving Ben L all kinds of time to write speech synthesizers in Brainfuck.
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I always wonder about how dwarves in fantasy settings manage to survive. The only answer seems to be trade. But then you think about stuff like large groups of orcs or goblins in caves and there's just no way.
Plump Helmets, you can cook them and brew them!
Edit: Someone else mentioned stuff growing underground but neither DF nor BL were mentioned.
Got you covered.
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saving Ben L all kinds of time to write speech synthesizers in Brainfuck.
It was actually pretty nice of you to think of all that for him. You might have given him enough time to learn another artificial language, too.
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Most of the trade my dwarves do is trading old worn out clothes for farm animals. Also, it's not just mushrooms underground. They also have a special kind of wheat and some kind of plant they can make sugar and syrup out of. And there's a type of bush that has very tasty leaves and you can make soap out of its ground up seeds.
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E_INNUENDO_OVERLOADE_DISCOURSE_CAN_FUCK_OFF
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But you know, with civilization so sparse and no forms of long range travel, it's like the pioneer days all over again.
The "pioneer days" lasted 50 years (assuming we're talking about pioneers the way westerns show them). They didn't stretch out to infinity. See, the pioneers reach a place, they build it up, and then stop being pioneers because the "frontier" moves after you settle the place. Fifty years is a long time. A hundred years is a very long time. Two hundred years is a belgium very long time.
The answer to "why is there no progress" is not "because they haven't progressed". That's a tautology.
For years in WW2, Japan fighter planes only used wood and fabric, despite cooperating with the Germans that had metal planes.
Well, that was "only" seventy-five years ago. I imagine then that they never figured out how to build metal planes during the wat, and must be no closer to building metal planes today. Oh, what's that, they figured it within five years (with help, granted)? Then maybe twenty times as long would be enough? After all, without help and without even knowing it was possible, the Germans and everyone else worked it out in twenty or so (WWI to WWII).Then they fell behind, and now they can't even build a stealth plane HAVING blueprints.
Have they been trying to build stealth planes for a hundred years?Also, a lot more people who had their most basic needs satisfied so that they could actually get around to inventing shit.
Do you run into anyone that is hungry or thirsty in Fallout 3? Is there any evidence in the world that there are hungry or thirsty people? Sure, they live in a wasteland, but is that reflected in any aspect of the everyday life of the people you meet? Or do they just have a modern consumerist society with a wasteland backdrop? They have guards and taverns, it's safe to say most everyone has their needs satisfied.You don't have guards until you have something worth guarding, and enough surplus to have people who's only job is guarding it. And you don't have taverns until enough people have enough surplus (not taken by the government to feed the guards) to support other people who's only function is to administer that surplus (tavern-keepers).
Look, you have a world where ten-feet scorpions roam the land because SCIENCE! and you're arguing bottle caps.
I'm arguing that it doesn't make sense AFTER TWO-HUNDRED YEARS. Caps are a terrible medium of exchange. And you'd realize it if the game didn't abstract it away into a number in your inventory that doesn't take any space. Try hauling around a thousand real bottle caps and tell me how reasonable they are.I don't mind the lack of realism, except when it is so ridiculous that I have to wonder why things are as they are. And a two-hundred year time skip does just that.
Why wouldn't there be?
Who are they raiding? The people that can't grow crops because it's "a barren wasteland", as you point out later? How do they not die off? Raiding is a high risk trade (someone in the places you raid might have guns, so even if you are generally safe, given enough raids you're going to end up getting hurt or killed), and again, raising babies requires stable settlements. Why don't the more advanced settlements build better defenses, since they're more advanced and can have people dedicated to that?Your raiders are nonsensical. Either everyone is dirt poor, and you wouldn't be able to subsist from raiding them, or they're not, and they will build defenses in time. Again, TWO HUNDRED YEARS.
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The "pioneer days" lasted 50 years (assuming we're talking about pioneers the way westerns show them). They didn't stretch out to infinity. See, the pioneers reach a place, they build it up, and then stop being pioneers because the "frontier" moves after you settle the place. Fifty years is a long time. A hundred years is a very long time. Two hundred years is a ■■■■■■■ very long time.
They didn't last forever, we have governing groups now. It's just that they aren't linked because we didn't develop the long-distance travel.
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hauling around a thousand real bottle caps
Try hauling around a thousand gold pieces. And yet, you do in every other game.
Raiding is a high-risk trade
They're high on fucking Jet most of the time, do you think they care? As for kids, I'd expect a high turnover rate too - there aren't exactly many condoms after the end. Not to mention that probably lots and lots of people who can't make a living in the bigger settlements turn to raiding.
hungry or thirsty
The whole ship-city-thing has beggars around, just to give you one example.
or they're not
Some places and communities have enough to build defences - Brotherhood of Steel, probably most of the NCR territory - and those generally flourish and develop slowly but surely. But with all the power play and conflict of interest, nobody's really willing to share that with the outsiders, so more rural areas don't exactly get in on the action.
And the wasteland is a big place with rather small population. There's enough to sustain quite a bunch of raiders.
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Try hauling around a thousand gold pieces. And yet, you do in every other game.
Not every game. Some make coins weigh something (50 to a pound is D&D standard).
They're high on fucking Jet most of the time, do you think they care?
It doesn't matter if they care. It simply means it's not sustainable.As for kids, I'd expect a high turnover rate too - there aren't exactly many condoms after the end.
But who is raising them? How do they survive to the age where they can start raiding? Why are they turning to raiding? It would be more understandable if you had a bunch of communities that raid each other, up to a point.just to give you one example.
You mean the ONLY example. Which just highlights how small a concern this is in the game itself. It's not just nonsense, it's inconsistent with itself.Also, I notice you "cleverly" avoided answering the point that taverns and guards mean abundance. I'm going to interpret that as you conceding I'm right.
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Taverns and guards stem off high demand for safety (because radscorpions and raiders) and booze (because life in Fallout world kinda sucks). It also means an abundance of guns and alcohol, not necessarily everything else.
Look, we can hypothesise that maybe it should kinda be a bit more developed, but it's far from being as outrageously impossible as you claim. There are still swaths of Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa where people live years behind the times, despite our capabilities of communication being infinitely great than what you have on the wasteland. And no supermutants.
So it doesn't seem impossible at all to me that places like NCR inner territory, where people develop pretty much as you want them to, can coexist with small towns and villages that see little to none of the progress.
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Taverns and guards stem off high demand for safety (because radscorpions and raiders) and booze (because life in Fallout world kinda sucks). It also means an abundance of guns and alcohol, not necessarily everything else.
How do you think you get to alcohol? You need to ferment food. Which means you have to have food to spare, because otherwise you died of hunger just to get drunk, and time to spare because making booze takes some amount of time.
If you are going to sell that booze, then someone else has to have something you want to exchange for it. If they can exchange that something for your booze, then they have an excess of something else. You already have food, so they have to be offering something different (better food, at least). So now you have at least two people with an excess of food, one of which also has an excess of time.
If you have excess food and excess time, you are not a subsistence farmer by definition. So despite all protestations to the contrary, the "wasteland" is pretty fucking productive. Yeah, some places are stuck in time. If you visit them, you won't find taverns there.
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I cast the circle powers and used a mace, like a real D&D cleric.
Well...none of the clerics I've seen in D&D use a mace -- the closest thing I've seen is a 3.5e one that wields a quarterstaff...
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How do you think you get to alcohol?
How aged is the alcohol? 200 years perhaps?
Alcohol was in quantities for millions, and now you have hundreds.
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My cleric, uses a mace, and stuff.
Because it's Skyrim.....I'm going to use that like some people use "Because I'm Batman".
I used to be an adventurer like you... until I took an arrow in the knee... why can I manage to still be a guard.... Because it's Skyrim!
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none of the clerics I've seen in D&D use a mace
Buh? Really? It was really common in 2nd.
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Yeah, some people say so, but that includes the ones I've seen in 2e.
(I haven't played a cleric in 2e myself, though -- our party needed a wizard at the time, so that's what I made. My 3.5 cleric is longsword/shortbow being elvish and eventually a mounted fighter, and my 5e cleric is a crossbowman)
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IIRC it is because there were limits on clerics and swords in some styles of 2nd (due to modeling off of medieval europe).
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IIRC it is because there were limits on clerics and swords in some styles of 2nd (due to modeling off of medieval europe).
Not that it made much sense even within its original context -- enough blunt trauma, and blood will spill...
Filed under: those folks didn't know jack about blunt force injuries, they need to find out what "splat" means when applied to 200lb beings
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@RaceProUK said:
The element is normally embedded in the glass itself; you can't damage it without breaking the glass too
in modern cars yes, older cars it's sometimes just "printed" on the back.
eitehr way i'll stick to window clings that i can get off with my fingernails. much easier.
On older cars the printing is done on the inside of the glass. This is so that ice scrapers don't damage the defroster element. That means you can safely apply stickers to the outside of your rear window and remove them later with a razor blade.
Problem solved.
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I moved 19 posts to a new topic but I'm too lazy to make a joke out of this post: The Religion of Scientific Game Announcements
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One of my favorite post-apocalypse movie is The Postman, because it demonstrates exactly your points. (Yes seriously. I like that movie. Sue me.)
I preferred the book. Couldn't make it through the movie without getting annoyed.
