In regards to the nitpicks, wasn't it stated somewhere that the bombs used in the War were more of a neutron-bombish kind of thing, more aimed at depopulation and irradiation than destroying infrastructure? Then again, that's not what the intros to the games imply (if not outright say), so who knows?
Touche on the brotherhood and enclave part, but the supermutants I believe kinda had to be there for this to constitute an actual Fallout game since they're a big part of the setting.
So I guess Bethesda were in fact playing it safe (and uninspired, save for a few bits and pieces) with FO3's setting. Oh well, hopefully they'll try something new with FO4.
The super mutants didn't have to be there, either. They were barely there in Fallout 2, weren't they? Pretty much Broken Hills plus a random encounter.
The strange thing about Fallout 3 is that they try to recycle
both Fallout 1 and 2's plotlines, and confusingly enough the actual menace in the Capital Wasteland, the super mutants lifted in all respects from Fallout 1 in terms of plot presence, is entirely incidental to the plot of the game - I mean, you even go to their place of origin, then proceed to do exactly nothing about it, because nobody really seems to care at that point beyond a simple mention to one of the scribes, I think, that "hey, Vault 87 is where the super mutants come from" and he's like "oh, cool, but let's get back to that Enclave thing".
I mean, it would have been pretty cool if they had recycled just Fallout 1's plot, or just Fallout 2's, because those are perfectly good plots to recycle, but they had to do some kind of confused middle ground where there's super mutants and their progressively succeeding assimilation plot, but no Master or Lieutenant (as in, actual villainous
characters) to guide it and give the threat a face, there's the Enclave with their nutty schemes, but in an outside context kind of way where they just suddenly drop in (though I admit the radio station's foreshadowing that), and your dad's idea is the water chip plot hook from Fallout 1, but on a regional scale and sort of magical and dependent on the GECK, which I believe was described in Fallout 2 as having seeds in it, the knowledge to make sandcrete structures, fusion power generator schematics and stuff like that, but is described in Fallout 3 as the tribals talked about it in the very beginning - some kind of magical invention that'll solve all of the problems, and then they derail the Brotherhood of Steel from Fallout 1 to sort of tie the resulting mess together, with a nod toward the derailment in the form of the Outcasts. I understand why they did it - have to take everything that's Fallout and put it in the game (if superficially) to ensure some kind of continuity given the time that's passed. A way to mark their territory, so to speak.
Now, with Fallout 3 hopefully having gotten that territorial marking out of their system (unless they have the idea to have super mutants and the Enclave vie for center stage in the next game as well, and I sincerely hope they do not), they might actually be ready to produce something a little newer - I know the Institute sounds pretty cool, with androids and high tech and all that stuff. And that's something to be happy about, because Fallout 3 did get the style of the world right in a lot of the places, but the focus of its plot means the parts they did get right don't have quite enough development attention devoted to them.
EDIT: also, does anyone else get a strong Bioshock Infinite vibe from that trailer? Lots of color, airships, flashbacks, New England imagery... though I suppose Bioshock and Fallout have thematically highly similar settings with their retrofuturistic aesthetics.
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Topic: Fallout 4: It Just Works (Read 810971 times)