the case for Fo3

[kradeelav]

i’m going to be controversial here: i liked Fo3’s pathos in the plot far better than NV’s.  Here’s why.

( under the cut for a _lot_ of low grade mentions re: sexual assault b/c legion and raider talk - fallout’s a weird edgelord like that.)

 

I think NV’s the one game/piece of media that’s finally led me to think there’s such a thing as a little too much camp in the camp-vs-pathos spectrum for me -if you’re going to be an edgelord with the whole sex/death/violence thing, there’s got to be at least an emotional, personal acknowledgement of it otherwise it makes the world look like something a tween would make - basically, re: the whole slaver thing, it is utterly chickenshit compared to Fo3 about following through on the implied horror.

in Fo3 - literally the first thing you’re likely to run into after escaping from the vault is this creepy abandoned schoolyard where you go in and it looks straight out of silent hill with spikes of rotting human meat, cages with dead skeletons and decapitated heads on pikes and oh hey there’s your first introduction of raiders!  sweet dreams!  and it doesn’t ever get better! 

there’s a pretty impressive array of evil that you can sink to - being a slaver, allying with raiders, selling kids to them, (idk if that was actually a mission but it was pretty blatant they had kids in cages), actively sticking on slave collars on people - basically being as close to a rapist as you can without actually showing it on the screen.

NV has a similar faction what with the legion, but my issue is (a) it is. a constant. goddamn refrain of ~they target women~ almost exclusively, and other than a pretty good start of showing their violence (re crucifixion in Nipton), there’s …. nothing like that again, and there’s a lot of characters that see them as honorable, even.  neutrally, and most often - more of a joke.  they’re a walking cosplay rapist joke, essentially.  and you couldn’t just kill all of the legion talking NPC’s without suffering a massive loss in karma.

“at least” (and i hate saying that) raiders were just … universally evil.  you could let loose some steam by going to Paradise Falls and just … massacring them and feelin’ like you did a very good deed that day.

I think I was partially lucky by reading a fic that introduced me to Fo3′s weightier tone before going in - but man, it didn’t let up with that weight - it didn’t take the foot off the pedal of beating it in your head that raiders were scum (Enclave too; they essentially kidnapped you, killed your dad in front of you, and it was very implied/encouraged that you went on a revenge rampage afterwards.) Almost every raider camp had cages or slaves you could rescue, and there was a grand total of /one/ raider you could chat with if you were in good karma …. and you didn’t loose any karma by putting a shotgun to his head. 

NV has a gorgeous variety of (yes, well written!) characters, but they stand … very weirdly in a space that clashes horribly with the Legion’s existence.  In NV iirc there’s only a grand total of … 2? legion slave cages (Cottonwood Cove + the Fort itself)?  and one you can’t rescue anyone out of.  their camps were just this vaguely normal thing that was weirdly silent in comparison with all of the characters harping on what they did - and there was tons of legion characters walking around amicably.

(I think NV tried with the NCR lady officer who’s entire backstory is that she was raped and her fellow men basically hired you to take the raiders out (note, not legion, raiders again lul) - but that felt so boringly routine in comparison to the other bounty hunter missions, and there was no agency (or decapitated heads at least) that you were able to give /her/ on a silver platter.

show, don’t tell. 

don’t imply the worst of humanity lightly, and then call it a ‘joke’ when you got cold feet.

i’d love it if like - there was a female ranger who went off the deep end after seeing too much of what the legion did and started this weird cult around her being a self-styled ceaser (almost a splinter faction of the legion, but she’d actively raid them and everyone). very violent, very raider-esque - one of your repeatable quests if you wanted to make good with her would be to bring mutilated legion scalps/heads/balls (I like the latter because it’s faintly ridiculous and brings back a very much needed dose of camp while being pitch black but lol ’too edgy’) for 50 caps/ammo each. hell they could be decorative options.  y’all could take over the legion and make slaves of the dudes or something. I’m spitballing.

(for the truly all-out slaver evil alignment if you sided with ceaser, one of the required missions would be making her an example by enslaving her and a bunch of her followers and having a repeatable mission of enslaving people - again, the point is to actually /go there/ instead of constantly goddamn mentioning it but being too much of a pussy to do so.)

not that my current character is basically that ranger but ex-legion lol you get the idea

anyway! tl;dr - if you’re going to have gorn and shit, toss a dagger to the underdog as well for fair turnabout!

good morning! 

i woke up thinking about this lol.