Fallout

mainstream success, selling 25+ million copies and being an Action RPG staple for most games
in the years to come. If you enjoy the Bethesda Shallow Sandbox Experience first featured in
Morrowind and perfected in Oblivion, then you will probably be happy with Fallout 4. Also,
you probably think that the only real criticism that old Fallout fans have against BethesdaFallout is the change from turn based isometric gameplay to third person action based real
time gameplay, when that is more of a byproduct or a symptom of Bethesda-Fallout problems,
rather than the cause of them.

To nip that particular argument in the bud, the reason turn based combat and an
isometric perspective was so beloved by Fallout fans was because they were mechanisms that
best helped to portray Fallout as the PnP campaign simulator in video game form that it was
designed to be from the very beginning. Before Fallout became it's own distinct franchise, it
was supposed to be a post-apocalyptic game based on Steve Jackson's PnP ruleset G.U.R.P.S1.

1http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Vault_13:_A_GURPS_Post-Nuclear_Adventure

This game had five key tenets and this is part of what I will focus on;
Rule #1: Multiple Decisions. We will always allow for multiple solutions to any obstacle.
Rule #2: No Useless Skills. The skills we allow you to take will have meaning in the game.
Rule #3: Dark humor was good. Slap-stick was not.
Rule #4: Let the player play how he wants to play.
Rule #5: Your actions have repercussions.

After licensing issues prevented the Vault 13 G.U.R.P.S game from eventuating, we got a
homebrew system in it's place that became known as S.P.E.C.I.A.L. However, these core design
goals still permeate just about every aspect of Fallout's design. Removing key aspects from
that framework without considering how it would affect everything else, like Bethesda did,
greatly damages the game as a whole.

It should also be noted that the cancelled Black Isle Fallout 3 'Van Buren' project
would've featured an adjustible 3D camera and optional real time combat in the vein of
Arcanum anyway2. It's easier to blame nostalgia driven neckbeards and that's what the gaming
community at large has generally put it down to, but it's not the truth at all. Rather than try
and take into consideration what makes Fallout good and design around that, they (Bethesda)
try to shoehorn their own features and design principles even if it directly contradicts central
aspects of the Fallout franchise. This is why Bethesda is incapable of creating a good Fallout
game.

2https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uuDKrY7eW0

"If you play Fallout 3, you know, Liam Neeson is the voice of your dad, and there are some good
emotional beats there, but there’s only so much you can do when you’re clicking on a line of
dialog and there’s no spoken response. So the emotional depth that we got by having a voiced
protagonist has actually [made the story] way more tense than I ever expected."3
- Emil 'books don't have emotional depth' Pagliarulo

This speaks to a deeply flawed vision that Bethesda continues to push with their
version of Fallout. Specifically, they attempt to build a connection between the player and the
game by integrating the player's personal story into the main plot and making it the focus of
the experience. In Fallout 3, your connection with a "middle aged guy" was put forth as your
primary motivation for completing the game's main story. The likes of the radio jockey Three
Dog, also emphasise the point. Three Dog is a character who, if listened to on the in-game
radio, will extol the player's virtues if morally acceptable decisions are made in quests, or the
opposite and condemning you if the player engages in less than scrupulous actions. The player
character is at the centre of the gameworld and should take centre stage in the narrative
under this design philosophy. Bethesda sees this as 'emotional depth' because when the world
looks to you to make a decision, presumably, you'd care more about it. Making conversations
cinematic and giving the player character a voice is just another a way to make the player
character a stronger presence in the game world.

However, this is in vast contrast to what Fallout has been doing from the very
beginning. In Fallout 1 and 2, the player character has a backstory and a story arc, but the
protagonist is ultimately used as a window into the world. Fallout is a series about society and
human nature, not the player character. The character's personal story arc merely places them
in convenient circumstances in which they're able to explore the world and see first hand how
their actions can affect it. This is different to what Bethesda does in at least one crucial way.
The PC in Black Isle's Fallout games is presented as the agent of change whereas in Bethesda
games, the player character is presented as a literal messiah. Simply put, in Black Isle's Fallout,
the protagonist's story arc is important because it gives the player an opportunity to explore
the world around you through your interactions. In Bethesda's Fallout, the protagonist's story
arc is important because the world revolves around your character and progressing with the
story allows you to define your character as 'good' or 'bad'.

3https://archive.is/SOOvN

Black Isle's Fallout gives the player many, many forms of interaction with the
gameworld as a way to become immersed in it. The West Coast is dirty, gritty, violent and it
can showcase the best or worst of humanity depending on who you run into. You can seduce
people, become a Porn Star (with the right stats), become a Heavyweight Boxing Champion
(again with the right stats), or a Slaver or help Myron create addictive drugs. You can say and
do all sorts of things if you are roleplaying that kind of character. And all these actions are
optional side content that are structured around your skills and attributes.

These kinds of “down to earth” interactions already weren't part of Fallout 3 but Fallout
4 with it's voiced protagonist compounds the issue. The overwhelming majority of voiced
dialog would be tone neutral conversation progression. Because all interactions are cinematic
and voiced, there's less room for non-conventional interactions covering controversial
subjects. With changes to the skill system, all special dialog might be loaded onto a Speech
skill like in Skyrim. This links back to Rule #1 mentioned above. By offering less ways to
interact and navigate through dialog situations, you are offering the player less and less ways
to overcome obstacles and challenges in the game. While the game is set in an open world, the
quest design becomes more linear. The end result is an experience where the player doesn't
feel as connected to the player character. This is because the player character can no longer
express themselves through any nuance that relates to their skillsets or non-binary morality.
This isn't that much of an issue if the game is filled with well written dialog sequences that
allows the player to express a complex range of emotions, motivations and skills. However this
is Bethesda we're talking about.

“One of the things we really tried to avoid is surprising the player with whether they've been
good or bad. We wanted to be clear to you that you're making a conscious choice to be one or the
other. I've played games where I made a choice and I thought I was being the nice guy, and then
it's, "Wait, wait, why is he upset?" We didn't want it to be a surprise. Sometimes it's a surprise in
terms of how a person reacts if you are being a jerk, but it's not a surprise as to whether you're
good or bad.”4
- Pete 'I need to be told when I'm a bad boy' Hines

The lack of character depth for the protagonist becomes all the more apparent when
you look at the Karma system from Fallout 3. Karma in Fallout 1 and 2 are minor systems that
can be summed up as a "moral reputation". They have specific titles for levels of Karma and
consequences that relate mostly to interactions with potential companions. But as a whole, it's
not very relevant. Unless you cross certain lines (like killing children), the Wasteland in
general isn't going to care about your morality. Why would the people of the Den or the
gangsters of New Reno care if you've eaten your vegetables and been a good boy? The people
in the game care about the tangibles. And it's this dilemma that provides much of the fodder
for the moral quandaries you'll face if you wish to play as a virtuous or selfless character. The
role of morality in a post-apocalyptic Wasteland that's so far removed from what we are
familiar with, is absolutely central to how the Fallout games are put together because Fallout
deals with how society rebuilds from the brink of destruction. It asks 'how do we rebuild in a
way that this will never happen again?' As such, many of the situations you encounter are
coloured in shades of grey as opposed to strict black and white. Power struggles by forces in a
conflict of ideology5, instead of clearly defined perfect good and satanic evil. Granted, the
original two Fallout games had plenty of situations where you choose between an asshole and
a non-asshole, as well as featuring many broadly good v evil decision points. But in the ending
slides, no significant consideration is given to your morality. The games don't assume your
motivations and judge you for them, it just lets you navigate the setting and push the changes
you want onto the gameworld through your choices.

Your character is defined by your personal moral code, your narrative choices, your
skillset and your physical attributes. That's why moral dilemmas are a staple of Fallout games,
it's a game predicated on challenging the player, to see if it's possible to change the human
nature that got the world to this point, and show the player the results of their choices. “War
never changes”.

4https://archive.is/IiTZz

5]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cp44Pr5b30

Bethesda's Fallout however, turns this concept on it's head. Just about every action you
are able to undertake is given a moral value through the Karma system and through characters
like Three Dog, and your Father, the game constantly reminds you of your character's morality.
Your decisions throughout the game are categorised neatly into 'good' and 'evil'. This is also
reinforced through the endings. Unlike the other Fallout games, where huge variance is given
based on your decisions in each of the communities you encounter with some level of overlap,
the Fallout 3 endings emphasise the player's morality in each of their decisions. The effect you
had on society is second to whether the PC was naughty or nice.

By forcing the player into strict moral guidelines that the game hammers in at every
opportune moment, the player loses a real connection with the world that they're exploring.
The player is forced to see everything in a lens of good and evil, and this harms any potential
nuance that the game could display when it comes to morality and characters. Everything is
either 'good' or 'bad. This absolutely destroys the protagonist as a well rounded character,
because they're ultimately defined by what the game can allow you to do. In other Fallouts,
you can define your character by your skillset, which informs your playstyle, as well as your
narrative choices. But in Bethesda's Fallout, your range of potential actions to define yourself
is more limited, your interaction with the skill system for roleplaying purposes is much more
narrow because it can't fit into the mold of 'good or evil'. The range of actions you can take in
the game are boiled down to 'I am good' and 'I am bad'. You are shoehorned into certain
character archetypes that are shallow in nature and the game works so hard to define your
experience using those archetypes and nothing else.

"That's what we try to create, that sense of going anywhere and doing anything. GTA V does it so
well. It puts you in its world and it makes you its director. It says yes to the player a lot, and that's
what we try to do. It's just a phenomenal game."6
- Todd 'don't believe his lies' Howard

Bethesda have long stated that a major goal in their games is that the player should be
able to 'go anywhere' and 'do anything'. This central tenet of Bethesda design is at the core of
why Bethesda's Fallout is so obsessed with the player character (and moralising him/her).
The player is at the centre of the experience, and the player should be in control of their own
destiny. As an ideal, this isn't necessarily bad. In fact, it fits in nicely with Rule #4, however,
Rule #4 and #5 work in concert for a roleplaying experience. You should offer the player
freedom, but you need to have consequences for their actions too. The problem is that
Bethesda chooses to understand this idea as 'nothing should overpower the player, the player
should be allowed to do anything they want'. We've seen this manifest in the Elder Scrolls
games in the form Quest Compasses, Zero Barriers to Guild Progression and Level Scaling.
Removing repercussions and meaningful barriers for players in the name of player freedom.
Bethesda games are designed to be a sandbox to be played with at will. The settlement
building features being advertised as 'optional' content for Fallout 4 seems to support this
idea even more. Modular features over an interconnected, reactive roleplaying experience.
Nobody wants their WRPGs as an 'on the rails' linear experience. The problem is that player
freedom and player agency requires proper context. The context being the ruleset, the game
mechanics and the laws of the setting for internal consistency have to take precedent.
Roleplaying needs to be structured around those things, otherwise you end up playing pretend
instead of actually roleplaying. The difference between roleplaying and playing pretend is
whether the game acknowledges what you do within the confines of the ruleset and acts
accordingly7.

But it's that reactivity and design which Bethesda has been actively fighting against
since Oblivion, because the Bethesda Shallow Sandbox Experience is against inconveniencing
players with things like 'internally consistent game logic' or 'mutually exclusive content'. They
encourage you to play pretend and call it 'roleplaying choices'. What happens in the end, is a
game where the player is a 'tourist' and the internal rules/logic of the setting are more like
suggestions. But the reason for it in the first place is that it allows players to create a character
concept, and identify with that concept if they want to succeed at the various challenges the
game throws at you. Rather than spending millions of dollars on voice acting and limiting
what the player character can say, simple lines of text that relate back to a player's build can
allow the player to have a profound emotional connection with their characters through

6 https://archive.is/BdaLs
7http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/larping-and-crpg-mechan...

roleplaying. That is the reason for Rule #2, all skills will be meaningful throughout the course
of the game. It doesn't mean to say that any kind of build should be able to overcome every
challenge. Indeed, certain skills in Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 only had limited usefulness. But it
means that skills shouldn't be trivial or disposable, all skills should offer something important
to the experience so that any kind of character concept based around a certain skillset can find
something to hang their hat on.

By having a sanitised game world that gates off risk from players and insulates them
from the challenges that the setting provides, for the sake of gameplay convenience, Bethesda
shows explicitly that they do not care about the core tenets of Fallout.

Designing an easily navigable and sterile environment that poses few risks for the
player can also close off ways in which developers are able to reinforce narrative tones or
themes through difficulty and gameplay situations. Something as simple as 'The Glow' from
Fallout 1 would not exist in Bethesda's Fallout. Unless the player has the right build and items,
it's completely impossible to fully explore the entire location before dying. The player in most
cases has to sacrifice blind exploration and focus on what their goals are, constantly going out
of their way to manage their radiation levels. Limiting the player using the game mechanics
like that is complete anathema to the Bethesda Shallow Sandbox Experience. However by
doing so, Black Isle designers are able to hammer home the idea of The Glow as a literal
treasure trove of the Old World. It makes you want to explore it. The risk/reward at play
makes the player more invested in the location and it's story than any kind of cinematic or
high fidelity texture.

“Violence is funny! Lets all just own up to it! Violence done well is fucking hilarious. It’s like Itchy
and Scratchy or Jackass – Now that’s funny!”8
- Todd 'Komedy Klub Kustodian' Howard

As funny as childish violence might be, the humour of the Fallout setting is mostly
grounded in irony and juxtaposition as a means of telling the player a chilling message about
the society they are exploring. This goes back to one of Fallout's central themes. "War never
changes". Many people (including Bethesda themselves) have taken that to mean that 'history
repeats itself'. However, the main takeaway from the quote isn't about history repeating itself,
it's about why history repeats itself. War never changes because people never change. The
opening statement of Fallout is an indictment of human nature and informs the player that
Fallout is a dark and cynical setting. It's that cynicism that drives Fallout's dark humour, it's

8https://archive.is/g1PIu

why Fallout has a clean retro 50s future aesthetic, one that evokes optimism and a golden era,
yet juxtaposes it with the terrible atrocities and violence of Fallout's broken and messed up
world. It's a big statement to the player, that humanity is a tainted species and that no one can
escape the violent, selfish and barbarism of human nature. The player character in each of the
Fallout games exists to challenge that idea and break it, or confirm it, based on their actions.

“If war doesn't change, men must change, and so must their symbols. Even if it is nothing at all,
know what you follow, Courier…
…just as I followed you, to the end. Whatever your symbol…
…carry it on your back, and wear it proudly when you stand at Hoover Dam.”

Bethesda's Fallout fails to understand this. Their idea of humour lies in using the
juxtaposition as a means displaying absurdity. Little Lamplight and Big Town, The
Superhuman Gambit where a former Mechanic and AntAgonizer villain fight over the town for
no real reason because it's “funny”. To be fair, Fallout 2 shows off a lot of absurd humour too,
it's actually fucking awful at times, but what makes Fallout 3 different is that it's humour isn't
baked into the setting. Fallout 3's ridiculousness isn't anchored to the setting via some sort of
logic or in-universe purpose. Being self contained, Fallout 3's humour isn't necessary for the
narrative or themes to function and they don't serve any dramatic, thematic or comedic effect
through the use of contrast and juxtaposition like Mr. Fantastic from New Vegas who combines
witty lines with the realisation that the NCR really is so incompetent that they'd hire him.
Dukov as a counter example from Fallout 3, doesn't really serve a purpose outside of
'lolrandumxD'. This causes issues because a lot of Fallout 3's locales are centered around such
'absurdities', meaning that in effect, what you have is a disjointed landmass with self
contained communities that are nothing more than cheap, disposable jokes that add nothing
to any greater narrative or themes of the game. I don't even have to go into further detail as to
why Bethesda fails at Rule #3 and why it's just bad world-building.

“There are no regional dialects, so sense of unified culture or society. And that's really the
problem, isn't it? The Capital Wasteland is a mess. You've got all these these little isolationist
factions, but there's no unification, no centralized government. As you play the game and listen
to President Eden's speeches on the Enclave radio station, you quickly realize that that's sort of
his platform – when and if he shows up in the Capital Wasteland, he'll make everything right
again. He'll return America to the land of the free and the home of the brave, replete with white
picket fences and apple pies.”9
- Emil 'so close…' Pagliarulo

The main story arcs for the main series of Fallout games (except for 3 funnily enough)
all deal specifically with society. The problem of survival in the Wasteland is central and the
largest factions that vie for power in the course of the series all claim to have the answer to
that problem. Fallout 1 has the Unity, in which The Master saw the future of humankind in
(forced) evolution. Super Mutants being "best equipped to deal with the world today". On the
other hand, Fallout 2's Enclave operated differently. Seeing themselves as the legitimate
successors of the Old World, they found their answer in the total extinction of what they
considered mutants. The Brotherhood of Steel meanwhile, saw the dangers that people could
do to the world if potent technology was in the wrong hands, deciding to dedicate themselves
to preserving technology instead. The NCR saw the answer in Old World American democratic
values. That it was possible to create a New America from the ashes of the Old. Caesar's Legion
also found the answer in Old World values too, but looked to the Ancient Roman Empire as
their solution. A totalitarian, monolithic culture sustained through conquest and slavery.
And in one way or another, you tackle these factions and agree or reject the answer that
is presented to you. But many of the side quests follow the same vein of thinking. There are
towns, villages and settlements at a fracture point, often because of the greater conflict (but
not always). And the PC is in a position to influence the direction of the locale. The player can
side with leaders and characters that they most empathise with or agree with ideologically. Or
maybe one NPC will offer you money to kill their rival. That works too. But these locales and
these situations don't exist in a vacuum, and your actions in one area or with one character
could impact how you deal with others. Fallout is about society after all.

Unfortunately, Fallout 3 and Bethesda's design mentality in general ensures that there
is almost zero cohesion amongst the pockets of civilisation and small settlements that
populate the map. Many of these settlements are given some sort of a theme to distinguish
themselves from one another. This is essentially what can be described as a themepark design.
The player, acting as a tourist, can visit these themed, segregated locations and interact or
spectate the events happening at their leisure, before leaving without consequence. There's no
attempt for social or thematic cohesion with the greater whole. Outside of Megaton and Rivet,

9https://archive.is/cDK0E

there really is no sense of society in Fallout 3, and because the quests arcs and endings for
each locale stay strictly self contained, then it's clear that Bethesda did not understand that
Fallout is about rebuilding society.

This also speaks to Rule #5, by ensuring that almost all locales are wholly self
contained, they allow the players to act inconsistently. Doing good in one place, and doing evil
in another. The simplistic Karma system balancing things out and the game not acting on your
decisions at all. An extreme example of this would be to blow up Megaton, and donate water to
the homeless beggars until your Karma is positive once more, enabling you to access the
morally acceptable ending slides.

As for another reason why I think Fallout 3's main story is bad and doesn't tackle the
core themes of Fallout games:
“Filtering through earth removes essentially all of the fallout particles and more of the
dissolved radioactive material than does boiling-water distillation… In areas of heavy fallout,
about 99% of the radioactivity in water could be removed by filtering it through ordinary
earth.”[10]10
It is equivalent to dirt in the most literal way imaginable.

10https://books.google.com.au/books?id=VPFTAAAAMAAJ (Page 61)

I could go on with the instances of Bethesda retconning prior lore, as well as document
the simple, basic failures of logic contained within the game itself. From the awfully written
lines, to the incredulous quest premises. I could blather on about the mediocre gameplay, the
non-existent difficult curve and the bugs upon bugs upon bugs. I could talk about the
advertised features of Fallout 4, and why creating your own settlement without significant
story integration into the main narrative is something that pushes Fallout further away from
'tight and cohesive open world', and closer to 'shallow sandbox'.

But the purpose of this isn't to show why Fallout 3 was a shit game and why Fallout 4
will be the same. Not necessarily, the goal is to demonstrate how Bethesda has shown
fundamental failings and misunderstandings at what makes the Fallout setting tick. The 5
rules that were established since before Fallout became Fallout have driven the design of the
entire series, none of which are rules that Bethesda truly pays any attention to. In addition, by
ignoring the key themes, and core literary devices that Black Isle's Fallout uses to drive home
it's message (like challenging gameplay situations and good level design) and allow the player
to properly roleplay instead of just playing pretend, Bethesda has demonstrated that they will
never get a Fallout game right. Doesn't matter if they went turn based isometric or not.

still can't believe I was this autistic to type it all out