"The companions are mechanically and narratively weak." Incorrect--Fallout is a story about being sawed in half by friendly fire from Ian's SMG every other fight.
After all these decades of never having heard of any of these games and my nephew saying "Fallout 4 is fun", I tried Fallout 1 last week because of Warlockracy. I have never played any of them, but you can definitely tell this is a pre-Torment superlite version of it. It's...not a bad game (and I am old enough to remember pinball machines being the only arcade games and your "next generation home console" was Pong or stuffing mulberries down a Daisy BB pump and shooting each other). It can be fun on the special encounters...first play thru, I bumped into the Red Ryder LE, the second, not 10 minutes in, I found the Ray Gun & Velvis. A VELVIS. I remember those at the travelling carnivals. It's a really short, unforgiving game. You really can't screw around with dialogue options and get away with it. I enjoyed it. Except for the companions. They are easily the most irritating part of the game, since you are so limited in what you can outfit them with, and they spend most of every game somehow shooting you (so I learned to shoot them first, ask questions later). I became emotionally unattached to Dogmeat very quickly both playthroughs, and now am on Phil's side of this whole debate. Plus...watching a Deathclaw punch Dogmeat halfway across the screen in a classic floor slide is worth it. Watching a Deathclaw or a Super Mutie repeatedly do it to me...not so much fun. And man can my body slide quite a ways. I give it an 8 out of 10 frustrations. I give it a 10/10 chuckle for BB Gun. On the first playthrough, I said screw it, just nuke the master, he's not important enough for me to talk to just so I could finish the game. Let's be honest...I intentionally did not listen to anyone on "how to build NoneError" as a character. Wow did that make rocket launchers & grenades..."an interesting concept". I would never have played this game outside Warlockracy doing the Fallout2 video (which like I said, I have played none of them prior). So after this 2nd playthrough, I am doing Fallout2 because Warlockracy. So yes, I guess if you are bored, I do recommend playing Fallout1. It is pretty neat. I did try out Garage: Bad Dream Adventure...and that...that is nightmare fuel. Oddly fun. Also recommend.
@@assassindelasaucisse.4039 The developers even acknowledged it in Fallout 2 manual. Dogmeat canonically dies by getting fried by a red forcefield in Mariposa.
"Are you ready for your game development lessons?" Brian Fargo gulps. Tim Cain breathes heavily. Chris Taylor dry heaves. "Yes, Mr. Howard." They said in unison.
@@toxiccorgi2108wow really? I knew Tim Cain had a falling out with the company when they tried to go against him during 2's development, didn't know this, thanks for the funfact
@@Kirbyoto2098 Yeah, it's truly pathetic a bunch of jackass gamers automatically assumed Obsidian got fucked over by big bad Bethesda when both Josh Sawyer and Chris Avellone have both repeatedly stated they didn't and the bonus was always a "clause" in their contract as a bonus that they in no way or form were depending on.
Fallout 1 has next to nothing to do with Obsidian. The bulk of the black isle fallout 1 team left after it released and went to found troika and Inexile. Obsidian was largely the later black isle team that did fallout 2. You have a little cross over but not much
@@user-ct8dm7ez4r end game is only Military base and Cathedral, everything else is easily defeated by your trusty hunting rifle or sniper rifle with small guns above 100
@@jdkesseyYou're playing Fallout 1 and then boom, the Lieutenant drops you into a FEV vat. You didn't ask this. You didn't choose this. But there it is.
It gets easy to forget how much of a imperfect art game voiceovers were as late as the mid '00s. Makes you appreciate the early successes like Fallout, Space Quest 4, and System Shock all that much more.
Not having to voice every character certaintly aided it, if you look up the casting a lot of actors where geniunely hollywood grade like David Warner (Sos Titanic & Time Bandits) and Keith David (The Thing & They Live)
They also pulled in Jim Cummings, Frank Welker and CCH Pounder, three other absolute powerhouse names for animation voice-over. Fallout's voice cast is honestly ridiculously high-profile and the end result is amazing.
Only thing that I dislike about them, and it's just a massive nitpick, is that they got british actors to play characters that are American. Like bro Morpheus grew up in South LA why does he talk like James Bond.
@@CatboyLover69 One day, Mango Loco will go the way Blue Raspberry Rockstar went, and you will have to learn how to exist without it. So sayeth the wise Alando
@@CatboyLover69At the one hand i can understand you in the deepest part of my heart but on the otherhand Dr.Pepper Energy still reigns supreme . And we should leave out energy drinks entirely and drink more water . Stay hydrated , survivor of the nowadays wasteland of lost individualism .
"Junktown is the blandest of ethical problems. Neither character believes in much of anything, it's like something out of Fallout 3- nOOOOO" Warlockracy's canonical event.
Thing is, there is 10 years of industry experience between those games. Including F2 and it's improvements that should have been paragon for F3. F3 simply should have known better. I can't blame F1 for missing the mark of quality of 2024 person, I can surely do so for F3.
@@NeoWorm The main difference is in fallout 1 a situation like that isnt the whole game where all of fallout 3 is multiple bland ethical problems in a trench coat made of cool explosions.
For me, Fallout 1 takes it because the conversation with the Master is haunting and beautiful and heartbreakingly tragic. His different voices like his mind is tearing itself apart, his final realization that he's perpetuating the very problem he set out to solve, it's truly awesome writing. No other conversation in any game I've ever played comes even a little bit close, I'm tearing up now as I think about it. It's a big shame the industry misunderstood these games so much, I really think a modern Fallout-like that actually understands what made the OGs work would be the best game ever: a perfect synthesis of 1, 2, and New Vegas.
Oh man, a boy can dream. I will say that there's at least a few quite decent total conversion mods that do a pretty good job of capturing the peak elements of the first two games.
It is unfortunately pretty limited, but cool when it does have results. Wizardry 8 has a similar function as the basis of its entire dialogue system and it's way stronger and more thorough. Unfortunate that the concept has fallen almost completely by the wayside.
It works a lot better *after* you have beaten the game once and want to try other builds (AKA Getting your arse whipped like butter.) You don't know whom the master is until the last 4/5ths of the game, only learn of FEV more after the trip to Mariposa, only learn of the sterility after talks with the BOS in the later end of the game... The "ask" feature works good, but it's so limited in scope that you'd have to know what to ask beforehand to get answers to help elaborate on where these people stand as characters in the story; Henry has no idea who Lou Tenant is really and can't wrap his head around what The Unity is for but you only really learn about their connections after you defeat The Master and by then you've likely forgotten about Henry and his water shed.
@@jdkesseythe worldly illusion is like a uhhhh *sips skooma* like a prison bro. *sips skooma* Ever heard of the panopticon? That’s like… that’s like the empire and shit. -Foucault
This video title after lines like "true Fallout has never been tried" from a man versed in Slav is peak comedy. We should all study Warlockracy-Obsidianist theory in order to work towards the Fallout utopia.
"In fallout, there is only one build, the agility build" And that's why games like underrail only tie agi to movement points instead of action points as a whole. Having a max of 10 AP, then having that directly tied to agi, is what single-handedly made agi the only stat you HAVE to max.
Most rpgs have that issue like ttrpgs. D&D for the longest time all you needed was dexterity for that armor bonus getting you depending on your rolls a 18-24AC powerhouse at level 1 with only 4hp.
underrail is also a combat simulator with mouse 1 gameplay. for any progress it made from fallout there are things that take it several steps back every time. also good luck playing underrail without high intelligence. it's the same thing.
@@realnigga722 You can actually get away with 5-6 int even if you need crafting, it's also somewhat ideal for some tank builds as higher int means you take drastically more damage from neural overload, to the point where anything over 8 can cause end game psi enemies to hit you with a mental breakdown>neural overload combo that kills you in 1-2 turns unless you also have a really high will stat. Another big difference is that you get another stat point every 4 levels until lvl 26 so 6 or 7 points isn't a huge deal once you get later into the game. You also don't need to jam 10 points into int off the bat just to have a viable build.
I appreciate the slams on Extra Credits in this video. Even if they aren't really meant to be that harsh, that channel is so stupid, but thinks they're so smart. Examples of videos they've made: "Counter-Strike is bad because one of the two teams is called Terrorists, and calling a team terrorists means players will become terrorists." or trying to start a series called "How to make ethical lootboxes" and never ever addressing the monetization.
@@mariano1196 Holy shit, I just remembered their insane takes about playing as Nazis in CoD, and something about orcs, the details of which I happily purged from my memories.
@@TheHalogen131 I'm happy to remind you that Extra Credits criticized the portrayal of orcs as big green brute warriors because they thought it was racist. Biggest self report of that year
One of the kind of interesting worldbuilding things was that the Vault that lead to Shady Sands had its experiment involve making the population as multicultural as possible. Thus the village leader and his daughter are Indian-looking and they worship Dharma, who kind of seems to be a post-apocalyptic distorted version of the Buddha. Likewise, the Khans are descended from a splinter group of the same Vault, presumably of Mongol descent thus modeling themselves after them. This element was essentially kind of lost in New Vegas where the NCR just felt like modern Americans and their common heritage with the Great Khans was never really brought up.
Also to note on NCR feeling like modern Americans, Great Khans manage to end up being like the Native Americans in one ending as a contrast where they get thrown into a reservation that is isolated and barren.
_Thank you._ This is the first time I've ever seen anyone else bring this up, and I've started to feel like a crank talking all by myself about how "New Vegas jettisoned what would have been the culture of the NCR." So anyway, my actual take here is that " 'Brahmin' is just the funny Fallout word for 'cow' " is the most _egregious_ Bethesda-ism there is, because it's one case where they've gone beyond just mis-interpreting their source material and stepped into actual orientalism. Moreover, the people of Shady Sands are making an understandable _joke_ when they call their cows "their Brahmin", and Todd Howard wants _none_ of that when there's brand iconography to be built instead.
I'm really scared of setting off a RU-vid comment-deleting bug (a spam filter, even) as I keep editing my comment and especially as I go to type another comment now, but let me just add: That line in Shady Sands uses the term "Dharma" strangely, in my opinion, by "thanking" it, but Dharma is a very real and central religious concept originating in the Vedas.
@@Ciretako Actually Fallout 2 jettisoned the possibility of that being the NCR’s culture. In that game the NCR is already attempting to present itself as the restored pre-war America and aren’t at all focused on concepts like Dharma. Those were only ever the religious beliefs and worldview of the country’s founder. Just think about how little of George Washington’s personal beliefs were relevant only a generation or two later and you’ll understand why Aradesh’s religion never would’ve been the NCR’s defining culture.
What the fuck, I played FO1/2 since they came out, dozens of times, and I just NOW noticed the Supermutants sniff their hands after scratching the ass in their idle animation. Another fire video! You're getting better and better.
I mean, there's a very high likelihood that Fallout 4 was meaningfully influenced by Fallout Equestria, so its legitimately worth talking about on a channel like this. The game itself is littered with blatant and undeniable references to Friendship is Magic, so bronies were definitely on the dev team, for one. Second, one of the biggest features of Fallout Equestria are the Memory Orbs- memories extracted (willingly or unwillingly) from a subject and preserved in an enchanted sphere, which can then be magically be re-experienced by any creature with magic or an appropriate device. That's the Memory Den, and getting Kellog's brain-thingy is not unlike fetching a Memory Orb in Fallout Equestria. Memory Orb addiction isn't uncommon, and pleasant ones are often traded as a commodity. Devices used by non-unicorns (technically, any non-magical creature) to experience them are particularly unique. They're used extensively in FoE- such as anesthesia and as a trap, since any magical touch will activate them, including telekinesis. Also, the protagonist in Fallout 4 can even have an exchange with Preston in which he says "Its not all sunshine and rainbows from here," to which the protagonist sarcastically asks, "What, I don't even get a pony?" This is significant because the Protagonist of Fallout Equestria repeatedly gets told "Everything will be Sunshine and Rainbows." And sometimes the detail is added, "As long as you're willing to stand in the fire." And yes, its exactly what it says on the tin, if you said that in a version of Fallout that had magic. ...And this dialogue occurs in Pinkie Pie's drug-induced, precognitive visions, which she then conveys to the protagonist via memories she knows will become memory orbs and that Littlepip will find centuries later. (So possible Mama Murphy inspiration there, too with psychic drug stuff, but that's soooo on brand for Fallout that I don't think it counts ) This is the FoE equivalent of dropping the phrase "The Boy who Lived" in something that kept referencing wizards and magic. Very on the nose. But I'm not going to fucking lie, as surprisingly well as the lore of My Little Pony meshes with Fallout, I just can't do it. I can't imagine cartoon horses enacting all this. I watched MLP:FiM show since season one, but I was D&D "Theater of the Mind"-ing it with humans and elves and equivalent humanoid races the whole time. Its friggin weird and I say this as a huge fan. Except for the griffins. Who can't imagine a Griffin holding a shotgun? And then there's the game by The Overmare Studios. They've been having some slow but steady progress over the years, with the Discord accouncements and convention panels being the best resources. Its currently scaled to a sort of vertical slice of the original story's events, taking place in the immediate vicinity of the Vault/Stable, and is planned for a full 3D, seamless world. Its actually got some alpha releases, but IDK when wave 6 is coming
I never got into Fallout Equestria because I heard it took most of its inspiration from Fallout 3, instead of 1/2/New Vegas. Though, to be fair, when the first part of Fallout Equestria was written, New Vegas wasn't even a year old. I know other people wrote stories in that setting that were more influenced by classic Fallout, and I'm sure they're decent, but it's not what the original author intended his mashup to be. I do really hope it's covered at least a tiny bit on this channel in a video on Fallout 3 or Fallout 4. Like with all things Fallout, Fallout Equestria has/had a massive Russian community. Which if nothing else, is incredibly funny.@@Bird-wz7nx
21:45 I remember that in many ways, though the people hanging out on the (at that point unofficial) fan forum Extra Curricular didn't realise it at the time, that video was the beginning of the end for Extra Credits. It was the very first time that James Portnow, who wrote the episodes, let his own specific biases in game design (formed during his time at Activision, working on CoD) override the opinions of everyone else. Most people put the beginning of the end later, around the time when James wrote an entire episode claiming that the opening to Skyrim ripped off the opening of Modern Warfare 3 (the last CoD game James worked on, with some hints that the opening sequence of MW3 was his idea) by having the player start in the back seat of a vehicle being driven to their execution, but looking back, the EC on New Vegas has the first signs of what would later become common knowledge: That James had a personal bias against Bethesda ever since he interviewed for a job there and wasn't hired, because while he pretended to be a mellow Keanu Reeves type, he was actually an insecure little tyrant who held years-long grudges over imagined slights.
What do you mean? You may only remember it for it's obtuseness on repeated playthroughs, but in comparison both Fallout 3 and 4 have longer starts. @@cyberninjazero5659
I just did a quick Google search and a bunch of topics came up about him and the treatment of his ex-girlfriend while they both worked at the same company. That "insecure little tyrant" bit applies to his personal life, too, it seems.
@@had_fun_once Oh yeah, absolutely. And that's not even getting into how he ruined Extra Curricular. The short version is: Extra Curricular started out as an unofficial fansite (with its own forum) for Extra Credits. Extra Credits eventually acquired Extra Curricular, only to, fairly soon afterwards, change the name of the website to just Extra Credits and shutting down the forums. There is no way that that wasn't related to the fact that the forum in its entirety turned against James when, after initially being very critical of micro-transactions and overpriced DLCs, suddenly started talking at length about how necessary and good, actually, they supposedly were. (Which in turn is definitely related to the fact that James leveraged the clout that being the writer for Extra Credits gave him in the games industry into a very lucrative career as a paid consultant for major publishers). Basically, as it was later revealed by the people who ran the site, James approached them directly offering to make the site the official hub for the Extra Credits fan community... And then the moment they accepted and handed him the keys, he started trying to stop all criticism of the show on the forums (and when he was told that he couldn't do that, because critiquing the show wasn't against the community rules, he told them he was shutting the entire forum down).
Fallout 1 & 2 are what really got me into crpgs because it wasn’t your typical swords, elves, and wizards recycled fantasy setting. I stumbled on them completely by accident too, back in 2002-2003 I got them from a guy on a pirate network I wish I could remember the name of. He’s was like woah you’ve never played this, and I traded him an unlocked copy of Photoshop my university gave out to students. I actually got a lot of good games trading unlocked Adobe products to people, Deus Ex included.
Same. Stumbled upon Fallout 2 at a swapmeet where I found a copy of it along with Daggerfall. While Morrowind solidified my interest in RPGs, Fallout 2 simply brought it to greater heights.
@@ChinothebadI missed out on Morrowind back in the day because of said aversion to your orcs, elves, swords fantasy setting. Skyrim was my first elder scrolls game and then I went back to play the classics in the series. Earthbound was another game that really got into because it had a unique setting for a rpg, well jrpg which is its own branch of game design philosophy.
@@johnpenwell6402 For me, Morrowind more or less was having a fully 3D fantasy RPG experience after having played stuff like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Eye of the Beholder. That along with it being a game that allowed me to go without being bound to any path beyond "don't kill this guy unless you want to bork the universe." Still, Fallout 2 had more depth to it just in how my actions really did shape the world after beating the game and knowing I made the right or wrong choice on top of how combat was for a turn-based game, just in knowing how it wasn't "wait for a bar to fill up" like with contemporary Final Fantasy games at the time or how I wasn't restricted to a simple attack if I could do an aimed shot that has a colorful description of how hitting my foe in the eyes left him recoiling in pain.
Another philosophical masterpiece. Fallout 1 was a game about youtubers all along. You see, youtubers are constantly at war with the concept of a coherent point. They try new angles of attack to explain why a RPG they liked is actually a perfect piece of high art that normies simply cannot understand without watching a 4 hour video. This is what Fallout 1 is talking about when it says war never changes. I am very smart for getting this. Fallout 1 is truly a perfect piece of high art- wait
Well done, Nik, You are awesome. Your videos have the same effect as Fallout 1 had on me after I played it almost 26 years ago (and I had to play it with a bootleg version in Russian as I'm from Eastern Europe) - think of the feeling a cat might feel when it gets stroked and pushes its paws as if remembering its mother. Stay safe and happy.
I wonder if you've ever read the Susan Sontag essay "against interpretation" in it she talks about how people often "interpret" past artworks to find "hidden meanings" to justify their own beliefs or ideas
I second this so much! I work and go to grad school. So, I just don't have the time for games like I used to. Give me something I can reasonably finish before I forget what the story even is anymore.
My problem is that despite how short it is, Fallout 1 feels really undercooked. Friendly NPCs turning hostile when THEY miss their shots and damage you unless you have Friendly Foe. Random encounters ignore player's level, so you can find alien blaster on lvl 1. NPCs blocking you because you can't make them back away. Companion intentory management is restricted to stealing and trading shit.
I'd say role playing has to involve acting in some way. Either acting out a premade script, but im a manner you envsiion, or improvisational acting in a loose sandbox framework. In terms of games there is also the axis of interaction mechamics to consider. A game that allows you to chose the method in which you engage with it could fit the description. So while Pong might not be a roleplayimg game, GTA may well qualify.
@@egoalter1276 Seriously though, the actual meaning of "playing a role" in "RPG" is being able to meaningfully affect that role, i.e. making a character "your own" - being able to "evolve" into a different character with different abilities. In adventure games like Zelda if you 100% a game and take everything the game can give you, you will end up with exact same character as someone else who 100% the game. That's progression, but its an adventure game progression, not an RPG. In RPG you can't have everything at once (usually because there's not enough points to take everything) so the game forces you to make a choice. In the end 2 people 100% a game may end up with different characters - different "builds". That's a fundamental trait that makes an RPG. Remove the capability to have "builds" and you remove the RPG aspect, and the game becomes "adventure" where your character develops according to how developers want them to, not how the player choses. The first post was a sarcastic riff on weird logic people some time use like "zelda is an rpg because you play a role of link, it's in the name" that got spammed on RPG forums at the time, because that can be boiled down to "everything is an rpg because everywher you play a role, even in pong".
@@SinaelDOverom I would agree. I do not consider the tLoZ series RPGs, despite them being foundational for the whole JRPG genre. ANd I would also agree that a game like DIablo or Borderlands, where you always play the same story, but can have a myriad different characters with wildly different gameplay to act out that story is still an RPG. Or even a game like Detroid: Become Human, or the Blade RUnner adventure game from 1997 are RPGs, because despite heving very much set characters in both, you can heavily influence the outcome of the story. You are only ever able to "play a role" by having some freedom in exactly how to do so.
Just finished Fallout 2 for the first time a couple of days ago. In my meddling with the Reno Families I ended up disrespecting without intention all bosses other than Mr. Wright. After being made into the Wright family and cuckolding Mr. Bishop, the ensuing casino and bar firefights against our rivals descended into some of the best scenes I have ever seen in a RPG. Gangsters spraying their SMGs and hitting patrons, addicts and prostitutes, people running for their lives afraid of the hulking tribal in power armor throwing bodies around with his super sledge and his bartender side-kick cleaning house with his guns. The chaos was amazing, never seen anything like it in any other RPG.
Funny that you are getting contradictional endings for New Reno. Completion of Mr Wright line brings Black Thursday and fucking Mr Bishop wife gives that your offspring returns to New Reno and takes power.
I only properly played the game last month. And I think with all the great ideas it has, the execution of pretty much everything is done pretty badly. With hindsight, everything could have been done in much better ways. Except the music. It's still as great as it was 25 years ago.
It really is a stroke of subversive genius that when you leave the vault and step into the dangerous wasteland the first place you find is a farming community so safe and secure that the people there are literally BORED of it. Of course it falls apart shortly thereafter (the "safety" part, not the community as a whole) but it's still pretty funny.
@@Kirbyoto2098A different perspective perhaps. Shady Sands seemed like a substinence-farming community, embodying the largely humdrum and backbreaking life of agricultural peasants. It isn't a horrible community, but it is what you would expect within the wasteland if something was to survive. To say it another way, I personally don't see the subversion--it's a safe landing spot for the Vault Dweller but a hellish environ compared to his clean and ordered vault--or maybe very similar, both boring, but managed and stable. The physical security of the vault would seem to take the upper hand, but also feels sterile, and built on technological foundations that will eventually fail, a delayed civilizational decline, stasis, and cargo-cultism. Shady Sands meamwhile could of course be snuffed out by the ravages of the Wasteland quite quickly in the stage we see it in Fallout 1. Perhaps the more unrealistic or shocking thing is that Shady Sands were not in orbit to some larger power or military force, as they aren't exactly shown to be capable of warding off attacks on their own. The raiders are too disorganized, but the fact the Fallout 1 communities are so isolated from one another while being rooted and stationary is surprising.
@@Kirbyoto2098 Does a pretty good job of establishing what life would be like out there. Even if you get by well enough farming cow dung you’re gonna be attacked by like 3 raider gangs
Fallout is a spectacular example of theory crafting and reverence for old ideas that not even the original creators might've predicted. And how you can absolutely overthink everything to death, which is only made worse by talking about it for decades with a community numbering somewhere between a few hundred forum posters and every single player who ever touched your game. Because fandoms and "communities" are amorphous blobs with personal feelings attached to all of that. And then RU-vid happens and personal preferences that have been crystallized for a long time get spread to huge audiences in well-produced videos that summarize those talking points for an audience that's not prepared or maybe even interested in interfacing with it at more than a surface level. Many systems are built and loved by gamers even when they're barely functioning or simply for rewarding the player with some sort of unique interaction once or twice. And it's all good. Prioritize whatever the fuck you like when designing games and the people interested in those same ideas will find it. True classics aren't following standards set by previous games, they try something different, and I don't think even the people making them truly know what will stick with the player until the dust is settled.
Ive had a bone to pick with Extra credits' video on FNV for 13 years that I have rarely if ever seen someone else comment on in favor of discourse about other things they are known for... This is why i love you warlockracy.
Man, I'm a Zoomer born in 2001, so only in the past few years have I even had the brain function to play classic RPGs. And you're totally right about how taste changes over time, trending towards the extremes, almost like an addiction. I love New Vegas. It came out just as I was ready for a game like it, and over the years, I have continually modded it to be more and more difficult and systems-heavy to the point where any sane person could never enjoy it. But, without those mods, the world seems empty, dead, and pointless to me. Within that conceit is part of this mystery of misunderstanding you are talking about. RPGs are best enjoyed when you don't understand them. Once you reach a critical point of understanding, the fourth wall breaks and it feels almost impossible to be immersed within the game in the same way. I love New Vegas, but I can only play it now as almost a ritual of remembrance in honor of the times I did not understand the world. The Age of Decadence is fucking obtuse, but from that obscurity it is able to maintain that fourth wall for people who have been the hardcore enjoyers for so long. Mass Effect while not mechanically deep, maintains immersion by never rocking the boat and telling a story that is easy (not great, but easy) to place yourself within. I don't have a broader point, but I think that there is something to be said about the fact that a good RPG begs to be played and understood, yet their magic comes from lacking a complete understanding. I don't think this is true for all genres, or even all mediums. Maybe I'm wrong and being blinded by my love for RPGs. Thanks for reading my novel, have a great day random internet citizen.
the first time i played a crpg, it was planescape torment everyone says to play an intelligence heavy spellcaster on that game. I think it is a good way to play, i'd say it is a terrible build for a first timer who barely knows how spells work, let alone spell levels. Years later, when the remaster came out after playing pretty much all the big crpg's, I had to re-play it. Because despite all the impressions I've had, the game's story was a huge blur in my head. Went with a way simpler, barbarian style build and basically played the game like a hack and slash. I was actually able to have focus on the characters and the dialogs this time Only then I realize I was playing some of the most important games of that era. A one of a kind game... So, in short, if it is a game about story and worldbuilding, focus on enjoying the story and the world. The mechanics are merely tools. Not the main source of enjoymemt.
@@KingLich451 I agree in some ways! I don't draw a massive distinction between narrative and mechanics, though. I think that narrative is a type of mechanic that is implemented by devs the same way anything else is. Torment is a good example of this, actually, a lot of the "verbs" the player has is centered around narrative interaction with the world. This means speech checks, dialog, and investigation. Disco Elysium also has a lot of mechanics focused on narrative gameplay. The freedom those games offer in terms of narrative is part of it's mechanical complexity.
22:23 As much as I loved Adam Sessler's critiquing style and X-Play in general growing up, I've come to realize as an adult that this was also a huge failing of X-Play, which thus affected much of gaming discourse as a whole. He and the show's writers weren't quite equipped to be able to fairly critique every genre of gaming like they tried. Adam loves cool ideas that "just work" and he clearly had a soft spot for tight story-driven FPS games. This led to a lot of good, boutique games with honestly-broken gameplay mechanics or horrific difficulty curves to receive terrible reviews, iirc God Hand was given a terrible review by the show and most RPGs had to have big effects to get any attention. I feel like this also encouraged the negative feedback loop which led to the 7th gen console era being full of linear, gray, cover-taking military shooters. The subsequent backlash led to everything becoming a grindy-but-hey-its-colorful RPGized open-world...thing. Everything had numbers, colors, and an open world, even if that open world sucked. Granted, 7th gen games being super linear was more a product of the tech, as was everything becoming open-world during the 8th/9th gens. But these were also big trends being encouraged by the consumerbase and critics alike. This little bit reminded me of my meditations regarding the shortcomings of X-Play, just thought I'd share. A critique/analysis regarding X-Play would be very interesting if you're familiar with the show btw. There's a lot of good and bad to be discussed, and plenty of the bad was the result of external pressures/the execs I'm sure, but I digress. Great video, I like these analysis/gameplay rabbit holes that you create, it's great stuff.
The discussion towards the end of becoming desensitized to CRPGs the more you play is something I've really felt over the years. At this point I kind of just can't get the RPG fun out of a video game, they all invariably make me want to do TTRPGs more. The games can still be fun but the itch of roleplaying a character just needs the tabletop setting to be scratched, especially since it means doing it with friends.
Fallout 1 has one of the best casts of voice actors ever, some incredibly legendary people like Tony Jay, Keith David, etc. People I grew up listening to whilst watching cartoons and movies. 2 is better but 1 will always have a great place in my heart for the cast of talent they gave it.
The thing that bothers me most about the the way fallout proceeds is the artstyle gap between 2 and 3. In both 1 and 2 there are some old world ruins, but people also clean things up, build their own structures which actually look like new construction. By fallout 3 everyone has given up and makes horrible shacks out of whatever scrap metal they can find, or lives in rotting pre-war housing with pre-war furnishings. How can they repair plasma weapons, yet not use simple metal-cutting tools to refurbish their own dwellings? Especially once the timeline moves beyond a century past the war you have to wonder why unmaintained dwellings made of old wood are still standing, and why no one has moved the wrecks of cars. While this might be excusable in highly irradiated no man's lands, the largest settlements seem to put less effort into constructing their own clothing and decorating their homes than pre-writing civilizations seem to have done. When you think about it fallout 4 is almost mocking you with the idea. You are building new components supposedly out of old junk that you have "scrapped" for materials. Yet 90% of the items you can build are old, decrepit pre war objects like stained mattresses or crooked wooden walls full of gaps. Its like the inability of people to construct proper housing is being mechanically acknowledged.
This is the worst post-apocalypse trope. People don't like living in filthy ruins! If you are going to live in an ancient building, most people would probably at least clean out all the skeletons first.
It is pretty interesting how similar games like Fallout 3 look to STALKER, when in STALKER the world hasn't ended and there is no global apocalypse. The reason everything is so messy and nothing is repaired or newly produced is because everyone there is functionally a squatter. There's no reason to take care of anything when you're just passing through. Only the major hubs have any infrastructure and that's because they have some functionally permanent residents. But for a Fallout-like apocalypse it makes no sense. People aren't passing through. It's their home but nothing feels lived in. Even New Vegas had this problem, though much less egregiously than Fallout 3, where you're in a town that looks like it was built by Orks from Warhammer 40K
With Fallout 3, the thing that made things feel more egrgious with the settlements was the fact they didn't have any source of food beyond "long expired processed food" and mutant animal meat and that was it. No attempts at farms and the like. I could get with the setting being in a region that was essentially the capitol of the US that a bunch of nukes would be used a lot more but even then, the lack of any attempts at growing crops beyond mention in one city that was just a derelict aircraft carrier makes the settlements for Fallout 3 less believable.
because of the internet, a russian man is making jokes about the Nation of Islam and Yakub in a video on 90's american RPG fallout. God i love being alive in modernity.
I remember having "eureka!" moment after reaching Necropolis, dropping into sewer/tunnels and finding that damn water chip... because there was not a single clue leading anywhere. I'm against handholding, but that was something else. Wonder how many people wandered to expire time limit or got filtered out by this. BTW you forgot to upgrade your power armor - only useful for the fight with the Master but it's there.
No need; thats what the max AGI is for. You can pop out and fire at him before dipping back behind a pillar. It's only a hard fight if you absolutely refuse to learn any of the game mechanics and bumbled through everywhere.
There are a few NPCs in the Hub who talk about how Necropolis seems to have a massive surplus of water seemingly from nowhere. I think Harold outright tells you they have a water purification system
@@KingLich451 You literally can, and the ammo drops in the room guarantee it. Me and my sibling tried a luck-endurance build and it *just* got us to the ends. A seven year old with minimal understanding of how AP works can beat the master, and at level 14 I might add in. Yes, he stole the chip from the ghouls and didn't know why they were upset.
An RPG is a game that is highly systematized through rules that you read in books. This system is processed through an organic analog cpu called a GM. Sociality in the game is induced by a bug in the GM, but like "skiing" in Tribes, became popular and intentionally included in later renditions of similar games that used digital processors.
After years of hearing about how great it is from RPG enthusiast channels like Noah Caldwell-Gervais and Warlockracy I finally played Fallout 1 last month and beat my plebeian yellow paint/objective icon following, google searching, save forgetting head against it for a week and now he's posted a guide. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Killian is a due process kind of guy and needs proof. You meaen like the assassin screaming "GIZMO sends his regards!" ? Gee, i wonder who sent that guy :)))
I can still remember getting the Tardis random map encounter, in the game. And being totally blown away, as someone in the USA and at the time. Dr Who wasn't huge here, I was only able to watch it late saturday nights. When it would come on PBS. and was a huge fan.
A side note, but I recently played and completed Arcanum for the first time, and then Pillars of Eternity 2 for the first time, and I couldn't believe how much better of an experience Arcanum was. There is a lot of magic lost between old-school cRPGs and modern ones, for some reason.
I'm happy to see this finally \o/ Fallout 1 is by far my favorite Fallout games in the entire series. To me, nothing got even close. I just could never really get into Fallout 2 as much as I wanted, it was just something about it that kept throwing me off. But I liked how F2 handled companions and some other stuff, though to me, Fallout 1 is just the better game all around. And yeah, the BoS are suppose to join you inside the base 100%. Regarding the Followers of the Apocalypse, there's a quest about oneof their missing people having been killed by the corrupt guards of the barricaded neighborhoor, and when you bring evidence of this to their leader the guards attempt to coup de'tat the place, and if you made plans with the Followers, they will join you in this fight as all hell breaks loose. I can't say about them attacking Children of the Cathedral though, I had no idea about that. Also at the bottom of the Glow, while borderline suicidal, there's a sentient AI that you can talk to and play games with. The Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout 1 are basically technologistist hoarders who tries to get you killed because they don't want some random person joining. Unlike the later games like Fallout 3 where they are some sort of " _Guardians of the Wasteland_ " stuff.. My solution to the Junktown problem is to; Kill the Doctor, Kill Gizmo, Kill McGuyver ( _Forgot his name_ ), kill or convince the gang to not be gang I forgot what you could do. But basically, free the people from all assholes. Hilariously one time when I played this game, I was able to non-stop extort bottle caps out of Bob's Iguana Sticks until I reached a ridiculous amount of 65 000 caps a week. But then I realized my grievous judgement in error as I was universally loathed by the entire wasteland as I had *Negative* -999 Karma. PS. To me, it is best when all systems work together. I want mechanical systems to freely build my character, but I don't want to feel like I can only specc one way. I want narrative choices with a degree of open endness to go murderhobo if I decide it. I want an interesting world that reacts to my choices, if I destroy a town then maybe a community of racoons will move in. It is best when many things work together like that.
I'm one of those weirdos who was playing rolly play games during this era but never actually played fallout 1. I started the series with fallout 2, and loved that game, but for some reason or another I never actually went back to play the first fallout even till now. I should probably go have a swing at it one day. Thanks for the video. And because of that I only know decades later that Lynette had the same voice actress as tandy.
You have such a great way of wording all the topics you discuss, and that combined with a great editing style makes these some of my favorite videos on the internet. Sometimes when I try and talk to my friends what I like about these rpgs my words fail me, and I end up just sending them your videos. Truly great stuff!
according too extra credits, i was playing video games one day and BOOM! i was an irish insurgent. i didnt chose this, but appearently new vegas makes you political like that :)
I was finishing brushing my teeth after lunch and I see that the professor/philosopher/historian of crpgs Warlockracy is finally making a video of my favorite fallout. Today is a great day, I thank you and so the desert rangers embarked on another adventure.
I always found it interesting that fallout has psykers. Not just with the master, but with the kid in New Vegas at the trading post. I wish there was more space in the series to explore the more "weird science" type stuff like that, but that like immortal family in fallout 4 just seems kind of over the top; same with mothership zeta moving aliens from an easter egg in the series to an actual group that has intervened in human history.
6:18 I dragged her all the way to the Cathedral and back. 35:50 Overseer will complain about "needing to find whoever's behind this" if you destroy Military Base early, IIRC. Unless Steam version's somehow borked. 46:13 IIRC you can get the Overseer gibbed both by having low enough Karma by the end and also by quickly starting combat as soon as he's done talking. So you can have your revenge even if you played as a big damn hero. 49:45 When I was young and replayed both games multiple times, I always felt like Fallout 1 was more darker and "spooky" game compared to the second. Fallout 2 felt more "chill" as a whole. Gonna have to leave them as a tie just to be a contrarian.
i also got that vibe that F1 stays true to its grim themes, there was just something about it when i got to the hub for the first time combine it with the music and it just tell me everything by vibes alone, which i don't really care to elaborate, i just feel the culture after the apocalypse.
Always a treat to see old games from the late 90s. Pretty much game you hear a voice that sounds a lot familiar. Immediately notices Keith David and Tony Jay in this video.
I think the thing that gets lost in the sauce about Fallout and why it worked is that it wasn't any one thing that made it innovative, but everything. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. There isn't a single "One Thing To Rule Them All" to making a great RPG. Like baking a cake, you need all the ingredients to make it work and if you leave out something or put in too much of something, even if it doesn't turn out to be a total mess it won't be the same. It reminds me of Id Software: You had two major groups of people there, best represented by turbo-nerd code-gremlin John Carmack and superstar game designer and idea man John Romero. What made Doom 1 + 2 and Quake so great was the fusion of Style and Substance, Brains and Soul. When the two halves of the company split with Romero taking notable talents with him to form Ion Storm, you had a division of Style and Substance, with Carmack representing the Substance, and Romero representing the Style. Just to make sure you understand how big the rift between these two halves is, John Carmack once stated to one of the lead story guys behind Doom that story in a video game was like story in an adult entertainment vid: It's expect to be there but it isn't important. Time quickly showed Carmack to be wrong with games like Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger, Baldur's Gate, and many other story-heavy games coming out in the years to follow to critical acclaim and huge sales. That attitude of "Story Is Less Important Than Gameplay" would hinder future titles from Id after the split. Romero had a different thought process, with a much bigger focus on story and style. While Ion Storm would publish Deus Ex with this philosophy, it would also release Daikatana, the game that killed the studio. Romero wouldn't compromise on his vision of the game, refusing to just finish it up with what was available and just ship it, resulting in game engine changes and other issues that delayed the game massively and wound up delivering a subpar product that could never sell well enough to make up for the time and resources used to make it, even if it had been good... which it wasn't. The games that followed just weren't the same. With Id's Quake 2, you had a game with plenty of substance but no soul. With Ion Storm's Daikatana, you had plenty of style but no brains. Both halves were ingredients of Id Software's previous success, not the source of it, and without each other, both suffered.
Decker is genuinely the most morally gray character in the game and it's not even close. He's basically a hybrid of Beta Killian and Final Killian. The two people he has you kill are a Merchant that multiple sources claim to be corrupt and is confirmed to be a part-time ally of the Ring of Thieves, and Jain, who is running the local Cathedral branch...who are actively planning the areas demise. Decker wants to take power away from the crooked merchants and the weak and controllable sheriff, and centralize it so The Hub can stop stagnating He also seems to have hunches about the Super Mutants and doesn't trust the Cathedral, both very good traits. I can even understand kidnapping the Brotherhood of Steel initiate. They're an iffy group themselves, they wiped out the Vipers a few years prior and are in the middle of a power struggle for who takes over once Maxson III is dead. Yeah, he's also an ahole. He wants that power for himself. He's extremely shady. But Fallout 2 shows that despite having control of both the currency and water supply, and despite having the biggest city circa F01, The Hub would ultimately fall behind and be coerced into joining the NCR 30 years after the end of the first game. Decker was right, the corruption did hold them back, and they lost their position as top of the region.
The readme for Fargus' Fallout 1 shared the deathclaw exploit: you can kill them without smashing the eggs, leave the area, wait and heal, return, kill the ones hatched, leave, return. etc. Gain however many levels you want. I love old pirate CDs and readmes. Fallout 2's one listed a case of beer and a cozy chair among system requirements, along with a full paragraph of a lazy translator called Yaroslav.
The quality of your videos has really skyrocketed since i started following you! Thank you for being an inspiration! Hoping for more theory-based videos in the future!
I'm sorry, but this is a rather silly comment. The guy covered arcane and obscure total conversions made in a post-soviet flat by a guy somewhere in Syberia. Of course he played one of the most famous RPG's ever made.
@@thefidgetspinnerofdoom I'll be honest, your comment didn't seem to me like a joke, more like one of these bot comments that say shit, like "Can we agree that the quality of this video is amazing? ❤️" And has a thirst trap as a profile picture.
Lilura and Cleve Blakemore mentions put a smile on my face. Kinda surprised how late in the game you went to Gun Runners. Although yeah, 223 pistol is awesome and is enough for lots of stuff. My favorite small gun in both games is Red Ryder LE BB though. It is ridiculously powerful and very handy, and it's also just so silly to destroy everything with quiet BBs. >physical copy of Fallout 1 Yeah, about that. It didn't have the latest official patch. It had a very important game-breaking bug (which was fixed in the patch) - if you initialized self-destruct of the mutant base via the computer, the game just doesn't let you out of this dialogue. And time is frozen in the dialogue, so nothing happens, you can't even die. >definition of arpegers The eternal flame war. For me it's not that complicated - it's not just about branching dialogues, systems, aesthetics, it is mainly about being able to do things in different ways, basically inventing your own playthrough on the fly. And I fully understand this is quite a task to program and balance and a videogame will never be like a live tabletop game with a DM (although the advancement of "AI" technology begs to differ I guess...). One of the worst feelings in an RPG is when you get the moments, where you 100% know how your character would behave in a certain situation and the option is just not there.
You can trigger the Followers help on assaulting the Cathedral and getting the spy's help by talking to Nicole about the children and their master. There should be an option asking if she can help you get in. I have a physical copy of the first game and afaik it has never been possible to get the BOS soldiers to follow you inside. IIRC, it was because playtesters kept getting killed by them when the mutants inside start combat. I really liked this video. Fallout 1 will always be my favorite RPG of all time, but mainly for it being my first "CRPG" and having a dark and grimy atmosphere I love.
Fallout 1 is the only one in the series that rewards you for playing an idiot. Sure, most quests are locked away as NPC's don't want to talk to a drooling moron, but it lets you bypass the super mutants in Necropolis by confusing them with your lack on intellect. It also makes the operation in the Brotherhood bunker cheaper.
Chalmers: you call Brahmin 'Brahman'? Warlockracy: yes! Its a regional dialect. Chalmers: uh-huh. What region? Warlockracy: uh... Central New California. Chalmers: Really? Well im from New Reno and never heard anyone use the expression 'Brahman'. Warlockracy: oh, not im New Reno. its a Shady Sands expression Chalmers: i see
I personally find the discourse around RPGs compelling. As a bit of a veteran of the tabletop genre of the roley playe games, (The campaign I am in right now is running since 2017, and has since went through 4 different systems), I don't care much for the systems side of things. I'd go so far as even saying that systems are something I can stomach being "light" so long as the world and the stories as well as the other things within, (people, events and everything else) is consistent, well thought out and following logic within the confines of the setting. I'll personally say that choices and consequences are important, or as important as the general "consensus" is within the commuinty seems to show, but they need to be incorporated into the proverbial dough of the setting otherwise they tend to feel a little....gamy. I remember back in the day when I played New Vegas for the first time and got to the second battle for Hoover Dam. Following the little side quests to get to know the surrounding players and attain their help was neat, and many of those small vignettes are something I'd point to any day as solid examples of telling very confined stories within a world, but, the overall experience felt a little gamy, like a checklist of chores - thus I personally believe that the wider discourse should move from the microscopic analysis of the genre or medium as a whole, but rather to move on to establish a set of paradigms through discourse as a whole surrounding the whole picture the medium offers. Not only as ways to guide things, but as a way to give projects with clear contrasts to those probable future paradigms something to stand in defiance of. I long for the day of an absurdist crpg seeing the light of the world.
I like the long video essays other people make I can play them in the background while I work on my videos and stuff sometimes I agree with them, sometimes I don't.. it's quite the adventure or not, what do I know
