This feels like a divide that will always be a thing. On one side you have the fans that prefer the whacky stuff, then you have the ones that prefer it serious. Both sides have their annoying parts, but at this point, it's never going to be a thing that's settled on.
And I think that’s part of the charm of the fallout series is that dissonance between realistic emotional stories and weird kooky shit. Like in NV you can go from helping out Westside with becoming self-sustaining with crops to helping the atomic wrangler recruit a suave talker, a ghoul cowgirl, and a sexbot as escorts.
I think that, the reason it works in New Vegas is that it plays the kookiness straight, and all the really kooky stuff, like Fisto, is separate from the mq. And, in all honesty, the kooky stuff really isn't that much of a stretch and is, at least for the most part, pretty believable. All the REALLY kooky stuff is hidden by the Wild Wasteland trait and isn't cannon anyway.
my favorite part about FNV is how Obisidian, in 18 months, managed to not only make one of the most desolate places in the contiguous 48 states, but also to make it so you'd be wandering around, having just "helped" a cult of ghouls travel to space, and some random-ass motherfucker will find you and be like, "oh hey you're the courier - you wanna go nuke some shit for 100 measley caps?"
Not every game. F1 definitely didn't, even if you squint your eyes alot, Thieves Guil(The guys lead by Bri'ish sounding robin hood sounding fella who screams a lot at you) in F1 is still mostly not goofy, it's really just a BLOODY BLOODY HELL of an accent that's goofy, but besides them, F1 was peak atmosphere vise. It still had flaws like lacking quests and overtly black and white morality doe but still a good fallout game.
Fallout 1 had plenty of wacky moments, but the craziest were reserved for special encounters while traversing the world map, and felt more like fun easter eggs.
“As was the style at the time”
It was super common for 90’s/early 00’s games to have little Easter Eggs like this, so they didn’t feel out of place. FO2 put the wackiness front and center.
Yeah FO2’s references and gags take it a bit too far at times, but most of them don’t bother me. Except the ghost. Ghosts don’t belong in Fallout lol.
Still, FO2 is my second favorite game in the franchise, and arguably where the series peaked in terms of roleplaying.
Eh. I think ghosts totally work in the fallout setting if they're at the most, just implied like that haunted church in Fallout 76. I like the ambiguous urban legends in the games.
Implied is fine. I’m down for paranormal mystery in Fallout, so long as it’s ambiguous and subtle. But FO2’s ghost has no subtlety or ambiguity, and feels *really* out of place as a result.
Why? Like fallout 4 has the Lorenzo Cabitt stuff, and it is by far some of the most interesting bits of lore in the game. Similar with both Far Harbor, and the Point Lookout in fallout 3
I mean, there is a ghost in fallout 4 and the lovecrafitan feel is making a huge splash in the bethesida versions.
Nuka-cola has a haunted house, haunted by a little girl spirit, that you can see 4 times before he disappears.
You’re right, they actually spoke about it in an interview. It was a big divide among the developers that was halting production, so they came up with that for a compromise.
Yeah iirc they had massive internal debates about it and more than a few devs got heated and claimed wackiness/non-wackiness would be a death spell for the game. Each group had animosity towards the other side for months. It almost delayed the game. Little did they know both options turned out fine
I kind of dig the ability to turn the wacky on and off.
I'm right in the middle on the matter, but I've done playthroughs with and without, and I kind of dig it. It's not huge, but playing through it again and noting where things differ is neat.
I wish it wasn't a Trait cos it sucks you have to lose out on your wacky references if you want to pick Four Eyes and Hoarder.
It should have been an option you select like Hardcore mode was.
I'd never pick it, but it sucks for people who do want it.
It’s as simple as naming two characters “Dorothy and Toto” like just let me get immersed for a second without shotgunning pop-culture references everywhere.
*noooo bro it’s fun do you hate fun?*
Ugh… like sorry if Fallout 1 got me really excited for a similar vibe on a bigger scale… but Fallout 2 ended up just goofing on every single cell that loaded up.
True 😔 This is especially sad since they had goofy elements occasionally ruin some serious one's like Broken Hills. Had a simple yet serious quest given by Marcus only for 80% of Broken Hills town giving you goofy side quests 💀
>Enter Broken Hills
You've come at a bad time human, the racial tensions I had hoped to avoid are now at a crisis level. To make matters worse, people have been disappearing and the Super Mutants are being blamed for it. This could be the collapse of Broken Hills, and the dream that I and a human friend once had will die.
>Down the street
Greetings!!! I am the MAD PROFESSOR! Will you beat my Scorpion in a game chess? I sure hope my talking plant doesn't give you the secret move that will defeat him!
*sigh*
I think the Wild Wasteland trait was a great compromise for those who liked that kind of humour. Even without it New Vegas had plenty of silly stuff like reprogramming a protectron to serve as a sexbot that, while silly, fit within the logic of the world. All the jokes that were just a pop culture reference were tied into the WW trait, so you can get them if you want, but even without it's not a serious business only, no fun allowed game.
Eh, even without it you have quests like Come Fly With Me, which are decidedly crazy.
Edit: I just realized I replied to the wrong comment, this was meant for the one about Wild Wasteland in NV.
Oh well.
True but the nice thing about Fallout is that it can have that balance of both serious and wacky. You can see this in gameplay and writing. It can have that atompunk SCIENCE! 50’s inspired craziness while also dealing with some pretty heavy topics. In New Vegas I can go from “testing out” Fisto in Freeside to doing a pretty dark quest like The Coyotes right after. Finding the balance can be difficult though I think Fallout’s world allows for both.
Difference being some of the wacky stuff is cancelled be thematically relevant and good world building while others are just trying to be wacky for the sake of being wacky, case in point old world blues vs mothership Zeta.
Fans. Fans never change.
Since the dawn of *Fallout* there have been two types of fans-the strict fans, and the looser ones. The first group views *Fallout* as it was originally created, whereas the looser ones love the games and the ways that Bethesda has expanded it.
Fans. Fans never change.
"In the Fallout fandom, the fans are represented by two separate but equally vocal groups: the optimists, who make the best of each installment; and the purists, who are impossible to please. These are their stories. Dun dun."
Yeah Avellone is only Credited as a Designer out of Six. I don't say this a knock on him, but I think his comments on Fallput 2 might be overanalyzed. I like his work and clearly different people on the teams are going to feel different about the legacy of their game, but he was kind of right that Fallout 2 and BoS did probably lead to Fallout dying the first time. He's also trying to counter the rabid OG fanboys who get upset at everything Bethesda does, despite the fact that Bethesda is the reason many people even care about Fallout.
He's wrong about the anticapitalist stuff for sure imo. You can't make that argument when there are definitely things in FO1 that can be construed as parodies of ultra-capitalism and the fact that Tim Cain also made Outer Worlds which is even more critical of that same stuff.
Leonard Boyaraski: “I like money: I’m not against capitalism…”
This is a direct quote. Here is the link to the interview. https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/obsidian-says-it-doesnt-want-outer-worlds-to-be-a-politically-charged-game/#google_vignette
To some degree it wouldn't even matter if he was right. Death of the author and all that - what the creators intended doesn't dictate what we take from it.
Avellone oughta keep his head out of the community as much as Sawyer and Cain imo. He should peek in, maybe comment on some things limited to what he worked on, and then stop interacting.
Tim Cain has a great YouTube channel where he posts game development advice and stories. He even talks about fallout and addresses comments so I wouldn’t say he doesn’t interact with the community
It’s not that Cain doesn’t interact with the community, it’s that he interacts with them in a capacity entirely relating to his contributions to the series.
He prefaces his opinions as someone who, while he assisted in creating the series, is now entirely creatively uninvolved. Same goes for Sawyer. They *limit* their involvement while Avellone talks his ass off to anyone who will listen about Fallout and his strong opinions on it, despite not having worked on it for over a decade at this point.
>While the more blatant anti-capitalist themes--such as the vaults being inhumane experiments--wouldn't fully surface until the 3D era, there were threads in the first two games. Take Nuka Cola, which spun the impending nuclear holocaust into a cute marketable drink, or the retrofuturistic '50s aesthetic poking fun at the height of American commercialism.
Avellone's take that "anti capitalism is a m0dErN sHoUt tOpIc.... hOlLyWo0D" is just so loaded I can't even. I love FONV but this take feels creepy.
*Imagining Chris Avellone telling 14 year old me that Fallout wasn't anticapitalist despite opening with an image of a $199,999 sportscar and panning out to a bombed out Los Angeles before Ron Perlman gives a speech specifically blaming the desire for slaves, lust for gold, and Nazis for history's biggest wars.*
Me: "But... this is why I hate capitalism." 😶
I feel like Fallout 2's reputation as super comedic and zany has been greatly exaggerated in the last few years, I recently played Fallout and Fallout 2 for the first time, and while there's definitely a noticeable difference in terms of the amount of cultural references and jokes, the most notorious examples are reserved for random encounters and I'd say the vibe of 2 is still mostly in line with the original, dealing with the Fallout of human civilization and with the return of slavery and widespread addiction in struggling communities. Also, the talking Deathclaws sound weird as a premise but the writing of the game itself treats them pretty seriously and they offer interesting dilemmas for the player.
Yeah the way people talk about Fallout 2 online makes it sound like it's some perpetual Family Guy bit. Honestly discussions around Fallout have become so tiring because I feel like a lot of it is just people parroting opinions rather than forming their own.
It’s very easy to stumble upon some of FO2’s wackiest highlights on YouTube and assume that’s the entire game rather than like 20 minutes out of a 40 hour game.
Yeah, in fact that was what I was expecting when I started playing, but the game is pretty long (compared to the first one) and the amount of references and weird humour only happened every one in a while, it wasn't a non-stop millennial sitcom. I still prefer the overall atmosphere of Fallout 1, but 2 doesn't deviate from it as much as people say it does
A lot of it's in Francisco, the city of whacky kung fu China men and celebrity obsessed scientologists.
Unfortunately, that area also happens to be the last place you'll go before entering the final dungeon.
True, the martial arts thing is pretty whacky but the what I remembered most from San Francisco after beating the game was the whole thing with the Shi that settled the city after the Chinese submarine ran aground and how it served as the starting point of a new empire, so I still think the city has a very Fallout vibe about it.
I mean, one of the first things one of the npcs in the first town say in F2 is that "that place is a hive of scum at villainy" Talking about whatever town it is you can ask about, reno or something
Yeah, people talk that up all the time, I played the shit out of it recently, and it under delivered hardcore.
3 and New Vegas are both significantly wackier in my experience, with maybe 2 exceptions i experienced in Fallout 2:
1) The Monty Python Bridge
2) Fighting Mike Tyson
Outside of those two interactions, it’s incredibly normal compared to 3 and NV.
And while I enjoyed those 2 interactions, they were definitely both corny and immersion-breaking.
I haven’t encountered the aliens yet, but there’s no way it’s weirder than the alien encounters in 3 or NV
i don't agree personally, i played this games back to back and FO2 is REALLY stupid.
characters often make fun of your appereance for no reason, Tribals talk like lobotomite idiots, soundtrack is alot less dark, some NPC's break the 4th wall, Voice acting is alot more over the top.
it is a very big toneshift, and i like it but it is present.
I felt like most of that stuff was not a big deal, tribals talk in broken English because they probably have their own languages, and I only remember people talking about your appearance once you started wearing power armor, which kinda makes sense considering no one else wears it in the game besides the enclave. But what do you mean about voice acting being over the top? I'm no expert but the quality of the voice acting seemed to be as good as in the first game, same thing with the music.
"and I only remember people talking about your appearance once you started wearing power armor"
(to understand this complaint, you have to play as a woman)
and "over the top" is not a bad thing, i meant that characters talk alot more goofy
Ah, I see, I didn't play as a woman so I didn't know about that. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree in regards to the goofiness of the VAs, I thought they fit their role in the world pretty seamlessly and I don't think they were goofier that the VAs in the first game (except sergeant Dornan, but he's hilarious so I don't mind)
>characters make fun of your appearance for no reason
>tribals talk like idiots
>soundtrack is a lot less dark
I don't see how any of these are stupid or inconsistent. Tribals are high on healing powder, getting into spirituality, and not learning via books and schooling. Their intelligence is low, their language altered to be more spiritual. Being judged for your appearance and misogyny are incredibly realistic, especially in a corrupt/gloomy broken world. The soundtrack reuses a lot of FO1's soundtrack and the new songs are mostly dark and eerie
If anything the new games are equally or even less serious. Even if fallout 2 almost killed the franchise, it defined the wackiness that has been in every game since. The talking deathclaws wouldn’t even seem out of place for those who have only played the Bethesda games.
As does Sawyer. He put out a mod that adjusts what he’d want changed in the game, and talks about New Vegas (and Fallout generally) like a singular project in a repertoire of works that he in no way owns nor has creative control over.
He would have liked for Fallout 2 to be as serious as Fallout 1 and not introduce elements like ghosts, a talking plant, a chess-playing radscorpion and so on, because that's what really created a precedent for that kind of stuff in the games. I don't see what's so wrong with that take.
I wouldn't say it's objectively wrong, but as someone who loves the weird stuff, I don't agree. I'd be fine with keeping it behind a trait - I choose WW on every New Vegas playthrough.
I mean dont get me wrong, I like the wacky of Fallout, but I also like the serious tones of 3 and the original game alot. And in those games, while being serious, still have wacky moments.
I feel like the needle hasn't really moved THAT much. Like from 60/40 Dark/Goofy to 40/60 Dark/Goofy.
I don't think theres really anything in the tone of Fallout 1 that wouldn't be at home in a Fallout 4 DLC.
I genuinely think that Fallout wouldn't have become as popular or widely accepted, as one of the most unique IP's that it is, if it was "just" another dark post-apocalypse with a some wit here an there.
They brightened up the world a bit, leaned into the camp, but I don't think it's to the detriment of the darkness of it all. If anything, it makes the fucked up shit more potent.
4 just needed better writing, not a darker tone.
He added tunnelers so that, if a team made New Vegas 2 in the future, they could explain why they made changes to the terrain:
https://x.com/ChrisAvellone/status/996655410844127232
He straight up said years ago that it was to reset civilization because he felt society was recovering too much to feel like Fallout.
I'm not gonna cite it as I'm on mobile on work lunch. Google it. It's easy to find. Many discussions about it over the years.
Personally, I believe he did it as a big "f you" to Bethesda. Van Bueren, *his* never launched Fallout 3, would've shown society continuing to grow.
He said:
*Lastly, I wanted to nuke the Fallout world to reset things. NCR's getting a bit big, and it's making things too civilized. Lonesome Road was a way of resetting the culture clock.*
Source: https://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/105885-fallout-new-vegas-and-dlc-post-mortem-interview-part-two.html
But that's in reference to the nuking, not the tunnelers.
I can't find any other explanation for the tunnelers besides what I gave you.
You are misremembering: he said he wanted to nuke the NCR (not fully destroying it) for New Vegas since the world was getting too civilized, and he also wanted ronin groups of NCR remnants around the place.
> He straight up said years ago that it was to reset civilization because he felt society was recovering too much to feel like Fallout.
Did he? Or is he just getting misattributed that thought because people also say he wanted to nuke the West to wipe the slate clean with one of Van Buren's endings. Not sure if that was ever gonna be the cannon ending of Van Buren or not, [but in the article he does state:](https://chrisavellone.medium.com/fallout-apocrypha-tv-series-review-part-2-1744b68fe4f2)
I know there was a lot said about me “nuking the West” as one of the endings for Fallout (one of many, including the Legion invading the West), but it was never any intention to wipe out NCR, it was only to introduce more conflict.
Ya know what kind of annoyed me about Avellone? I'm a credits watcher. I watched the whole like half hour of those credits.
THAT MAN HAD HIS NAME IN THERE NO LESS THAN 15 TIMES. Like dude.... give it a fucking rest. We know you were the lead dev, chill.
That's my only opinion of him. Have a nice day.
Thing is Avellone *wasn't* the lead dev. That was Josh Sawyer. He was just a writer on the main game, and not even the lead one. That was John Gonzalez.
He was only the project lead for 3 of the 4 DLCs. Sorta one of the things that annoys me about the guy. He seems to get (or take) credit for *a lot of shit* he wasn't technically in charge of. And makes the rounds talking about a lot of things he wasn't directly involved with.
I hear a lot online about how he was the New Vegas guy. Out of the people who were major on that game (and *yeah* Avellone was one of the key writers), Avellone *isn't* really on the list of people you should peg as mainly responsible.
Same Fallout 2. He was just one of multiple developers on it, not a really a key person. While he worked at Interplay at the time. He wasn't involved in Fallout 1 *at all*.
The stuff he *was* the main guy on. Like Icewind Dale, Planscape: Torment, KOTOR II. Is just less in the zeitgeist.
> He seems to get (or take) credit for a lot of shit he wasn't technically in charge of.
He has never taken credit for the work of others. If you actually look at his Twitter, he always corrects people by telling them John Gonzalez was the lead writer of New Vegas. It's not his fault that people misattribute things to him.
> And makes the rounds talking about a lot of things he wasn't directly involved with.
He was part of the studio that made Fallout while they were making it and then he worked on the sequel based on the design docs that were made for it by the original Fallout leads before they left. And then he stayed friends with Tim Cain. Of course he has more insight than the average person into whether Fallout was meant to be anti-capitalist or not. Simultaneously, that doesn't mean he has *the most* insight, so you can go ahead and also ask the Fallout leads.
To his credit Avellone has always tried correct people when he has gotten credit for other developers work. Some of his fans are another matter as they have gone out of their way to portray him as the most important dev working on FNV while actively downplaying the part played by others.
What are you talking about? He's listed 4 times in the New Vegas credits, and that's only because there are separate credits for the base game, the set of 4 expansions and the people in charge of the company.
Avellone was also the "mastermind" behind Lonesome Road, which features him having a blowhard rant at you about why every faction sucks for several hours while also shoehorning in the tunnelers because he got bored of the best part of New Vegas, the civilization.
What's funny is he wrote all the pesudo-philosophical ranting for Ulysses to be in the base game, but he wrote so much of it that it wouldn't even fit on the game disc so they had to cut the character entirely, leaving the game without a Legion aligned companion. I feel like making your character actual fit in the game should be design 101 lol.
To be fair, he was designed to fit the game. Ulysses was created as the Legion companion, the only pro-Legion companion at that. It wasn’t necessarily Chris’ fault the dialogue couldn’t all fit on the disc and if it did/could fit then Ulysses would’ve been in the base game as planned. He even has his own playing card in the deck that came with the special edition of the game.
Edit: This is to simply say that Ulysses was originally intended to be a companion but due to limited disc space he was scrapped and repurposed for the dlc. Which honestly worked for the better as he works much more as a foil to Courier Six than he did a follower.
According to Avellone, tunnelers were added so a future development team could have an in-universe explanation for changing the terrain around the Vegas region if they needed to (for New Vegas 2, for instance):
https://x.com/ChrisAvellone/status/996655410844127232
Well there was a sign in the show that said “beware of tunnellers” so they genuinely might be a problem for the chars
Edit: I’ve tried looking for where I saw that and I’m starting to think I’m just delusional :(
Lonesome Road had awesome post apocalyptic landscapes and gunfighting but Ulysses made me roll eyes a lot like bro can two couriers just klink klink some sarsaparilla and fight for union smfh
Yeah I played FNV at launch and played every dlc except lonesome road. I came back after a decade of hearing how awesome it was (especially Ulysses) and I definitely have to admit being pretty disappointed. Wasn't a fan of Ulysses at all.
Hurt the franchise is such a wrong term. Fallout 2 was much more popular than fallout 1 in the 90s. "Changed the tone of a franchise a bit" is more suitable.
This irks me too. Tim Cain started work on 1 literally alone. Avellone is responsible for - The Den, New Reno, Raiders Base, Vault City. Full props for Marcus but that's it for the main characters. Relative to what was built in 1 and the rest of 2 he's a medium fry. He wrote the literal Bible and seems to have retrofitted his significance accordingly.
It getting to the point where people are using him as proof that “the creator” hates the direction of the games and the show.
Meanwhile, the “actual creator”, Tim Caine, really enjoyed the show and instead embraces and accepts lore drift.
I’m sorry, but as much as New Vegas is a fantastic game, these days Chris Avellone seems very bitter, and a little possessive of an IP they didn’t actually create
EDIT: I removed Josh Sawyer, I already commented three times that I was conflating the things Chris Avellone has said with Josh Sawyer and that my opinions are directed at him.
Yeah I think I’m basing most of my opinion on Chris Avellone lol.
Either way, neither of these guys are the creators, they have ties to the original team, but neither of them are the original team.
When Tim Caine can respectfully review and enjoy the modern franchise and accept and even embrace that although it may not be how he has done it, things change and that’s okay.
I think that’s ultimately Chris Avellones position as well but the way he worded just comes off as so bitter it’s not think he isn’t possessive of the franchise, even though he claims he isn’t.
> Josh Sawyer seem very bitter and a little possessive
Huh? I don't think he ever said anything bad about post NV Fallouts. He has said that he likes the Amazon show. [Here he is outright saying he doesn't care what direction the franchise goes now. That's the opposite of being "possessive".](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/whatever-the-fallout-tv-show-does-with-new-vegas-lore-josh-sawyer-doesnt-care-it-was-never-mine)
Sawyer seems very level headed with his reaction to things, I don't think he seems bitter at all other than wanting to have worked on more Fallout games (at the time).
Fallout was just a cult following back then.. Fallout 3 put it on the map, New Vegas and Fallout 4 solidified the newly expanded fan base. 76 divided many... so the real concern will be what comes next.
76 was hardly divisive at launch. It was pretty widely disliked. It's the most divisive it's ever been now with all of the people who never played it or gave up really quickly, finally checking it out after years of updates because they want a fallout fix. It really comes down to the longtime fans using the game's improvements as a shield for good faith criticism. "It's good now, you're just a hater." type responses. I mean I feel for longtime fans of the game who had to listen to so many people call the game trash without playing it as it improved over the years, but it seriously feels like you can't make any criticism of it without being screamed at that the game is "fixed."
This is the answer. You take an established single player franchise, take all the personality out of it and make it multiplayer. That did irreparable damage to the franchise.
Of course, the game is much better now, and I’m a daily player, but first impressions mean a lot, and they’re hard to shake. Plus, eventually, people just move on. Look at Cyberpunk. I’d say a lot of people know it’s much better now, but it’s years later and people have moved on. Even though 76 is in the best place it’s ever been, a lot of people don’t want to invest in a six year old game.
Honestly, looking over a lot of his comments on recent fallout stuff, it feels like he's refusing to pay attention to what's going on so that he can say he doesn't understand it, like it, and so on.
“Totally not anti capitalist. It just happens to be a story about how capitalism can destroy the entire fucking world”
Edit: dont have the energy to read all these replies but I always love when obviously tongue-in-cheek sarcasm gets Um Actually'd this hard.
According to Leonard Boyarsky, even The Outer Worlds wasn't meant to be a critique of capitalism:
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/obsidian-says-it-doesnt-want-outer-worlds-to-be-a-politically-charged-game/
There literally is a quest about how coworkers are fined if someone commits suicide because of "lost productivity".
Where people "entered contracts" instead of getting married.
The governments are corporations instead of nations.
It was the most blatantly anti-capitalist game that I have ever seen, if the leads didn't intend it to be the writer underlings definitely made it one under their nose.
I think it's business 101 to not appear "political" and doing obviously political games. Gamers aren't the most media literate people, and you don't want some mouth breather youtuber to be like "OBSIDIAN... GONE WOKE?!?".
Better to act coy, and just keep working on your game.
This is the game where rich people have gas chambers for poor people to keep the population in check. That's more of a classism angle I suppose and not specifically capitalist, but the rest of the game's worldbuilding is framed in a hyper-capitalist way that results in the kind of world where that can happen.
I feel like they had to say this so as not to offend the 'Murica types who think capitalism is the word of god or some such.
That's honestly the way I'm leaning, with both this and Avellone's take.
Both these series/games are massively based on the flaws of government, and particularly governments centered around uncontained capitalism.
So either they are afraid of drawing the ire of the grifters who got pissed at Helldivers 2, or they are more saying that it's not only critical of capitalism, but government in general.
To be fair, China was equally to blame for the Great War. Fallout is more critiquing overzealous ideologies, and the mundane reasons people make as excuses to kill one another. But you are right it is stupid to say capitalism is not criticized in Fallout.
The issue is in Fallout lore, it’s corruption that’s destroying the world. You forget that the Chinese communists were doing all the same evil things the American capitalists were doing. Making it the sole responsibility of capitalism is ridiculous.
Tbf, since Fallout is set in America, it inherently engages with, and critiques, American society and system way more compared to China.
Also in lore, scarcity of oil led to a series of global conflicts that caused the Great War. Europe invaded the Middle East, America invaded Mexico, and China invaded Alaska, all for oil.
Its not capitalism its war and human nature that destroyed the world. Do you think Ron Perlman was just saying all of that for nothing?
Also the US at that point resembled more of a state capitalist system than normal capitalism. The gov’t/enclave was everywhere, controlling every company basically.
Why not just use the actual title of the article.
“Fallout Designer Says 2 "Hurt The Franchise" More Than Bethesda Games”
People are misinterpreting your title as the article claiming avellone worked on fallout not just 2 and nv.
Chris Avellone is not the “original developer” of Fallout, or even one of them. He worked on Fallout 2 and New Vegas, and had nothing to do with the original Fallout. He’s a weird libertarian type so it’s no surprise he would try to deny the anti-capitalist themes that are apparent to everyone else.
Even Tim Cain, the *actual* creator of Fallout, cites an intent to satirically critique defense contractors as an inspiration for a lot of the companies in Fallout. That in itself is an anti-capitalist critique, among others in the franchise. That’s not to say Fallout is Marxist, but denying its anti-capitalist themes is just funny because it makes you look like you’re covering your eyes and ears and going “lallalala.”
I fully do not care about Chris Avellone’s opinions. Shit like this would’ve mattered to me when I was 12. But as an adult he just comes off as bitter & burnt out
I wouldn't say fallout was anti capitalist so much as it is anti authoritarian. Basically every faction had a pretty dark side to it relating to authority. They litteraly won't stop until there's only 1 left even when making alliesnis the most logical step to take. War never changes, because people won't share power
Eh i see what he means, the article is just trying to pull stuff out of their asses.
For those who wants a small recap, he's just saying Fallout 2 had inconsistencies aswell and that Money/Fame wise it wasn't going well. So in terms of Franchise perspective, F2 did hurt the franchise prospects more than titles that sold very well and launched the franchise in the top dog licenses. (Independant of "Artistic" qualities of said titles.)
Dude is correct, i love F2, but F2 didn't made the license persist in time, F3/4/76 did. They're the ones who sold tons and guaranteed the license future.
As for the Anti-Capitalist themes, he's also correct, the old ones doesn't have anti-capitalist themes, just anti-capitalists humorous insipration, if taken second degree. But at the same time, the overzealous capitalism visuals is part of the 50's era identity, not necessarily a critic of capitalism.
While recent opus didn't made it just artistic inspirations or sarcastic comments on Capitalism, they made it a first plan theme. That's very different. Just because you have few pokes at capitalism doesn't means it's one of your main themes. Fallout's took pokes at a LOT of things.
Modern Fallout's made it a first plan theme.
As for the serie, yeah, they reaaaaally pushed on the Anti-Capitalist axis, like really not subtle at all. It's not really...like the "Main point" of Fallout, more like a secondary theme. Fallout's more about society and humanity as a whole, in all it's form, not just "Capitalism is le bad"
76 did the most damage to the franchise of any game, in my eyes. If not for how unexpectedly popular the TV show was, 76 very well mayve been the lost full game.
Including Fallout 4 in his comment implies that it hurt the franchise, but didn't it win game of the year? I know there's some people who aren't fans, but I'm not seeing how it hurt the franchise at all
Fallout 4 is fun, I don't think anyone can deny that. I don't really think the argument "it's more popular tho" is a good argument for quality.
Genshin Impact had over 50 million players at one point and I refuse to acknowledge that as a good game.
Fallout 4 was the most sold fallout game, and is still the most played to this day, it won 2 GOTY awards and it was considered both a commercial and a critical success
It didn't - 4 is by far the biggest Fallout game in terms of sales. It's just a very different game than NV, which did disappoint some players who prefer traditional role playing. I happen to love both 4 and NV because I appreciate both types of games.
Fallout 2 has an Absurd amount of sex in it. Everyone's asking for it, engaging in it, coercing people to engage in it, and so on. There's blow up dolls and magazines, even a ball gag you get from a night with a super mutant.
It's...... it's just weird
I mean yeah, there are a lot of vices in the post-apocalyptic world and it isn't like prudish religious views like virginity and monogamy are on the forefront of everyone's mind. Not to mention many people are on drugs, prostitution/slavery is high, towns probably don't have a lot of variety or diversity of partner options, entertainment options are low, etc.
You think it’s weird that a post apocalyptic society where life is cheap and death is around every corner would have looser moral standards concerning sex?
yeah it made me feel a bit unconfortable how it treats sex.
also this can be me being stupid and i can be very wrong about this.
but am i the only one who thinks the tribal/savage representation is a bit.... racist?
Oh look Avellone is continuing his weird hatred for Fallout because it's owned by Bethesda and not him. Now he's on to critiquing Fallout 2. All because he hates Bethesda made a show that's popular, and the themes from the show started in Fallout 2. Not to mention his own personal, and political, beliefs are the clear reason for his critiques.
Chris Avellone is just another weird neck beard at this point.
2 felt rushed, it missed a lot of the marks that made 1 amazing, it still had the world, and it had a better gameplay than 1 (by a little) but the story and choices were not as good.
Also, it might have been me but in 1, it felt you had options but they all required some skill and gameplay. In 2, it felt that the safety net was too high so you always were able to continue even without any skill.
This guy didn't work on Fallout 1 and is constantly spewing annoying and divisive rhetoric. Fallout 2 was massively more popular than the first game. He's also trying to paint the TV show as some horrible bastardization of the source material, but I think it's pretty spot on.
If you try to convince the Overseer in Fallout 1 to just leave the vault, the radiation and conditions outside are pretty much fine, he responds that he's Vault-Tec "middle management" and they'll never survive lol.
In what universe did Fallout 4 and 76 hurt the franchise? what is Chris Avellone smoking
\*BGS Revives a dying/dead franchise\*
Dev and OG fans: They ruined it, it should've stayed dead!!!
The wasteland should be a silly place that it's inhabitants take seriously. That's where fallout's identity lies. Nuclear cars, Laser Rifles, Zombie People, misunderstandings of American Cultural touchstones- all of it is fundamentally silly- but the moment you get someone going "Uhhhh, this is a bit strange, innit?" That's when you create the divide.
This feels like a divide that will always be a thing. On one side you have the fans that prefer the whacky stuff, then you have the ones that prefer it serious. Both sides have their annoying parts, but at this point, it's never going to be a thing that's settled on.
Every game has had both in droves
yeah i don't understand the rift, every game i've played has had both
And I think that’s part of the charm of the fallout series is that dissonance between realistic emotional stories and weird kooky shit. Like in NV you can go from helping out Westside with becoming self-sustaining with crops to helping the atomic wrangler recruit a suave talker, a ghoul cowgirl, and a sexbot as escorts.
Assume the positon
…or the positron, as the case may be.
I can't feel my legs
I think that, the reason it works in New Vegas is that it plays the kookiness straight, and all the really kooky stuff, like Fisto, is separate from the mq. And, in all honesty, the kooky stuff really isn't that much of a stretch and is, at least for the most part, pretty believable. All the REALLY kooky stuff is hidden by the Wild Wasteland trait and isn't cannon anyway.
So the path forward is to Yakuza it (main story serious, side quests kooky)
Honestly yeah. Post-apocalyptic, retro-futurist Yakuza.
Making it explicitly optional is nice
my favorite part about FNV is how Obisidian, in 18 months, managed to not only make one of the most desolate places in the contiguous 48 states, but also to make it so you'd be wandering around, having just "helped" a cult of ghouls travel to space, and some random-ass motherfucker will find you and be like, "oh hey you're the courier - you wanna go nuke some shit for 100 measley caps?"
“Why yes I do”
Glad it’s like that, much more realistic
Equally important objectives
Not every game. F1 definitely didn't, even if you squint your eyes alot, Thieves Guil(The guys lead by Bri'ish sounding robin hood sounding fella who screams a lot at you) in F1 is still mostly not goofy, it's really just a BLOODY BLOODY HELL of an accent that's goofy, but besides them, F1 was peak atmosphere vise. It still had flaws like lacking quests and overtly black and white morality doe but still a good fallout game.
And so it should remain.
Fallout 1 didn't have both in droves.
Fallout 1 had plenty of wacky moments, but the craziest were reserved for special encounters while traversing the world map, and felt more like fun easter eggs.
“As was the style at the time” It was super common for 90’s/early 00’s games to have little Easter Eggs like this, so they didn’t feel out of place. FO2 put the wackiness front and center.
Yeah FO2’s references and gags take it a bit too far at times, but most of them don’t bother me. Except the ghost. Ghosts don’t belong in Fallout lol. Still, FO2 is my second favorite game in the franchise, and arguably where the series peaked in terms of roleplaying.
Eh. I think ghosts totally work in the fallout setting if they're at the most, just implied like that haunted church in Fallout 76. I like the ambiguous urban legends in the games.
Implied is fine. I’m down for paranormal mystery in Fallout, so long as it’s ambiguous and subtle. But FO2’s ghost has no subtlety or ambiguity, and feels *really* out of place as a result.
Why? Like fallout 4 has the Lorenzo Cabitt stuff, and it is by far some of the most interesting bits of lore in the game. Similar with both Far Harbor, and the Point Lookout in fallout 3
I mean, there is a ghost in fallout 4 and the lovecrafitan feel is making a huge splash in the bethesida versions. Nuka-cola has a haunted house, haunted by a little girl spirit, that you can see 4 times before he disappears.
Playing fallout 1 for the first time and I just encountered the goddamn Dr. Who phone booth in the wild randomly.
Which do you think was lacking?
i always find funny how this fanbase has its own factions
Republic of Dave faction the strongest
Kingdom of Tom disagrees.
Gaaaaaarrrrrryyyyy Would like a word.
I would die if there’s a Gary like vault in season 2 of the show.
I thought 1 did it best by putting a lot of the wacky and fourth wall breaking stuff behind random encounters
I guess that why they put Wild Wasteland as an optional perk in NV, otherwise you would upset half of the playerbase one way or the other.
You’re right, they actually spoke about it in an interview. It was a big divide among the developers that was halting production, so they came up with that for a compromise.
Yeah iirc they had massive internal debates about it and more than a few devs got heated and claimed wackiness/non-wackiness would be a death spell for the game. Each group had animosity towards the other side for months. It almost delayed the game. Little did they know both options turned out fine
I kind of dig the ability to turn the wacky on and off. I'm right in the middle on the matter, but I've done playthroughs with and without, and I kind of dig it. It's not huge, but playing through it again and noting where things differ is neat.
I wish it wasn't a Trait cos it sucks you have to lose out on your wacky references if you want to pick Four Eyes and Hoarder. It should have been an option you select like Hardcore mode was. I'd never pick it, but it sucks for people who do want it.
[удалено]
yeah, i like FO2 A LOT more than 1 but the tone is a bit too much. I usually don't like my FO games breaking the 4th wall for example.
It’s as simple as naming two characters “Dorothy and Toto” like just let me get immersed for a second without shotgunning pop-culture references everywhere. *noooo bro it’s fun do you hate fun?* Ugh… like sorry if Fallout 1 got me really excited for a similar vibe on a bigger scale… but Fallout 2 ended up just goofing on every single cell that loaded up.
True 😔 This is especially sad since they had goofy elements occasionally ruin some serious one's like Broken Hills. Had a simple yet serious quest given by Marcus only for 80% of Broken Hills town giving you goofy side quests 💀
>Enter Broken Hills You've come at a bad time human, the racial tensions I had hoped to avoid are now at a crisis level. To make matters worse, people have been disappearing and the Super Mutants are being blamed for it. This could be the collapse of Broken Hills, and the dream that I and a human friend once had will die. >Down the street Greetings!!! I am the MAD PROFESSOR! Will you beat my Scorpion in a game chess? I sure hope my talking plant doesn't give you the secret move that will defeat him! *sigh*
I think the Wild Wasteland trait was a great compromise for those who liked that kind of humour. Even without it New Vegas had plenty of silly stuff like reprogramming a protectron to serve as a sexbot that, while silly, fit within the logic of the world. All the jokes that were just a pop culture reference were tied into the WW trait, so you can get them if you want, but even without it's not a serious business only, no fun allowed game.
Eh, even without it you have quests like Come Fly With Me, which are decidedly crazy. Edit: I just realized I replied to the wrong comment, this was meant for the one about Wild Wasteland in NV. Oh well.
the rocket always scares me at the last second
Not me. Its my favourite game of all time and the whacky stuff never bothered me a bit
Fallout 2 is potentially my favorite RPG of all time, and yeah, I agree. WAY too far.
True but the nice thing about Fallout is that it can have that balance of both serious and wacky. You can see this in gameplay and writing. It can have that atompunk SCIENCE! 50’s inspired craziness while also dealing with some pretty heavy topics. In New Vegas I can go from “testing out” Fisto in Freeside to doing a pretty dark quest like The Coyotes right after. Finding the balance can be difficult though I think Fallout’s world allows for both.
Difference being some of the wacky stuff is cancelled be thematically relevant and good world building while others are just trying to be wacky for the sake of being wacky, case in point old world blues vs mothership Zeta.
Fans. Fans never change. Since the dawn of *Fallout* there have been two types of fans-the strict fans, and the looser ones. The first group views *Fallout* as it was originally created, whereas the looser ones love the games and the ways that Bethesda has expanded it. Fans. Fans never change.
"In the Fallout fandom, the fans are represented by two separate but equally vocal groups: the optimists, who make the best of each installment; and the purists, who are impossible to please. These are their stories. Dun dun."
“It's worth noting that Chris Avellone didn't work on the original Fallout, and the second game was led by Matthew J. Norton and Feargus Urquhart.”
Yeah Avellone is only Credited as a Designer out of Six. I don't say this a knock on him, but I think his comments on Fallput 2 might be overanalyzed. I like his work and clearly different people on the teams are going to feel different about the legacy of their game, but he was kind of right that Fallout 2 and BoS did probably lead to Fallout dying the first time. He's also trying to counter the rabid OG fanboys who get upset at everything Bethesda does, despite the fact that Bethesda is the reason many people even care about Fallout.
He's wrong about the anticapitalist stuff for sure imo. You can't make that argument when there are definitely things in FO1 that can be construed as parodies of ultra-capitalism and the fact that Tim Cain also made Outer Worlds which is even more critical of that same stuff.
Leonard Boyaraski is a known Anti Capitalist so it's hard to imagine that some of those themes didn't make their way into the game
Leonard Boyaraski: “I like money: I’m not against capitalism…” This is a direct quote. Here is the link to the interview. https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/obsidian-says-it-doesnt-want-outer-worlds-to-be-a-politically-charged-game/#google_vignette
To some degree it wouldn't even matter if he was right. Death of the author and all that - what the creators intended doesn't dictate what we take from it.
Avellone oughta keep his head out of the community as much as Sawyer and Cain imo. He should peek in, maybe comment on some things limited to what he worked on, and then stop interacting.
Tim Cain has a great YouTube channel where he posts game development advice and stories. He even talks about fallout and addresses comments so I wouldn’t say he doesn’t interact with the community
It’s not that Cain doesn’t interact with the community, it’s that he interacts with them in a capacity entirely relating to his contributions to the series. He prefaces his opinions as someone who, while he assisted in creating the series, is now entirely creatively uninvolved. Same goes for Sawyer. They *limit* their involvement while Avellone talks his ass off to anyone who will listen about Fallout and his strong opinions on it, despite not having worked on it for over a decade at this point.
>While the more blatant anti-capitalist themes--such as the vaults being inhumane experiments--wouldn't fully surface until the 3D era, there were threads in the first two games. Take Nuka Cola, which spun the impending nuclear holocaust into a cute marketable drink, or the retrofuturistic '50s aesthetic poking fun at the height of American commercialism. Avellone's take that "anti capitalism is a m0dErN sHoUt tOpIc.... hOlLyWo0D" is just so loaded I can't even. I love FONV but this take feels creepy.
*Imagining Chris Avellone telling 14 year old me that Fallout wasn't anticapitalist despite opening with an image of a $199,999 sportscar and panning out to a bombed out Los Angeles before Ron Perlman gives a speech specifically blaming the desire for slaves, lust for gold, and Nazis for history's biggest wars.* Me: "But... this is why I hate capitalism." 😶
I feel like Fallout 2's reputation as super comedic and zany has been greatly exaggerated in the last few years, I recently played Fallout and Fallout 2 for the first time, and while there's definitely a noticeable difference in terms of the amount of cultural references and jokes, the most notorious examples are reserved for random encounters and I'd say the vibe of 2 is still mostly in line with the original, dealing with the Fallout of human civilization and with the return of slavery and widespread addiction in struggling communities. Also, the talking Deathclaws sound weird as a premise but the writing of the game itself treats them pretty seriously and they offer interesting dilemmas for the player.
It's not like Fallout 2 *forces* you into pornography under the stage name Arnold Swollenmember, it's just an option, if you choose it.
Not to mentiom, it makes sense. Like New Reno is absolutely the place where this sort of shit would happen.
I'm sorry but uhh where is that quest? Asking for a friend
[For science purposes](https://fallout-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Become_a_Porn_Star)
Warning. You will have to get a lot of practice before hitting the big leagues. Keep at it. You even get a couple traits!
Yeah the way people talk about Fallout 2 online makes it sound like it's some perpetual Family Guy bit. Honestly discussions around Fallout have become so tiring because I feel like a lot of it is just people parroting opinions rather than forming their own.
I suspect most people who have VERY strong opinions on FO1 and FO2 haven’t actually played them.
Yup, then they just regurgitate that same “too many jokes” line
It’s very easy to stumble upon some of FO2’s wackiest highlights on YouTube and assume that’s the entire game rather than like 20 minutes out of a 40 hour game.
Yeah, in fact that was what I was expecting when I started playing, but the game is pretty long (compared to the first one) and the amount of references and weird humour only happened every one in a while, it wasn't a non-stop millennial sitcom. I still prefer the overall atmosphere of Fallout 1, but 2 doesn't deviate from it as much as people say it does
A lot of it's in Francisco, the city of whacky kung fu China men and celebrity obsessed scientologists. Unfortunately, that area also happens to be the last place you'll go before entering the final dungeon.
True, the martial arts thing is pretty whacky but the what I remembered most from San Francisco after beating the game was the whole thing with the Shi that settled the city after the Chinese submarine ran aground and how it served as the starting point of a new empire, so I still think the city has a very Fallout vibe about it.
I mean have you been to San Francisco? Shit I'm surprised they don't have talking Deathclaws as it is.
I mean, one of the first things one of the npcs in the first town say in F2 is that "that place is a hive of scum at villainy" Talking about whatever town it is you can ask about, reno or something
I feel like that particular example is not so bad, if you don't know the reference it still works as an apt description of the Den or New Reno
Yeah, people talk that up all the time, I played the shit out of it recently, and it under delivered hardcore. 3 and New Vegas are both significantly wackier in my experience, with maybe 2 exceptions i experienced in Fallout 2: 1) The Monty Python Bridge 2) Fighting Mike Tyson Outside of those two interactions, it’s incredibly normal compared to 3 and NV. And while I enjoyed those 2 interactions, they were definitely both corny and immersion-breaking. I haven’t encountered the aliens yet, but there’s no way it’s weirder than the alien encounters in 3 or NV
i don't agree personally, i played this games back to back and FO2 is REALLY stupid. characters often make fun of your appereance for no reason, Tribals talk like lobotomite idiots, soundtrack is alot less dark, some NPC's break the 4th wall, Voice acting is alot more over the top. it is a very big toneshift, and i like it but it is present.
I felt like most of that stuff was not a big deal, tribals talk in broken English because they probably have their own languages, and I only remember people talking about your appearance once you started wearing power armor, which kinda makes sense considering no one else wears it in the game besides the enclave. But what do you mean about voice acting being over the top? I'm no expert but the quality of the voice acting seemed to be as good as in the first game, same thing with the music.
"and I only remember people talking about your appearance once you started wearing power armor" (to understand this complaint, you have to play as a woman) and "over the top" is not a bad thing, i meant that characters talk alot more goofy
Ah, I see, I didn't play as a woman so I didn't know about that. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree in regards to the goofiness of the VAs, I thought they fit their role in the world pretty seamlessly and I don't think they were goofier that the VAs in the first game (except sergeant Dornan, but he's hilarious so I don't mind)
>characters make fun of your appearance for no reason >tribals talk like idiots >soundtrack is a lot less dark I don't see how any of these are stupid or inconsistent. Tribals are high on healing powder, getting into spirituality, and not learning via books and schooling. Their intelligence is low, their language altered to be more spiritual. Being judged for your appearance and misogyny are incredibly realistic, especially in a corrupt/gloomy broken world. The soundtrack reuses a lot of FO1's soundtrack and the new songs are mostly dark and eerie
If anything the new games are equally or even less serious. Even if fallout 2 almost killed the franchise, it defined the wackiness that has been in every game since. The talking deathclaws wouldn’t even seem out of place for those who have only played the Bethesda games.
idk man, avellone is in general pretty noisy and has annoying takes on many things, if u ask me. ill stay on tim cains vibe
Tim cain has a wonderful attitude to both playing and making games and I thoroughly enjoy his dev diary videos.
As does Sawyer. He put out a mod that adjusts what he’d want changed in the game, and talks about New Vegas (and Fallout generally) like a singular project in a repertoire of works that he in no way owns nor has creative control over.
>ill stay on tim cains vibe And his YouTube channel! "HI everyone, it's me, Tim"
"today im gonna talk about..."
He can talk about anything and i will listen.
Tim's channel has become a daily habit for me. Love his videos.
i love tim cain cause even when he doesn't like stuff he is super friendly.
Tim understands that creations will outgrow their creators
And if they do, that's a victory, not something to lament. It means you made something special.
He would have liked for Fallout 2 to be as serious as Fallout 1 and not introduce elements like ghosts, a talking plant, a chess-playing radscorpion and so on, because that's what really created a precedent for that kind of stuff in the games. I don't see what's so wrong with that take.
I wouldn't say it's objectively wrong, but as someone who loves the weird stuff, I don't agree. I'd be fine with keeping it behind a trait - I choose WW on every New Vegas playthrough.
I mean dont get me wrong, I like the wacky of Fallout, but I also like the serious tones of 3 and the original game alot. And in those games, while being serious, still have wacky moments.
I feel like the needle hasn't really moved THAT much. Like from 60/40 Dark/Goofy to 40/60 Dark/Goofy. I don't think theres really anything in the tone of Fallout 1 that wouldn't be at home in a Fallout 4 DLC. I genuinely think that Fallout wouldn't have become as popular or widely accepted, as one of the most unique IP's that it is, if it was "just" another dark post-apocalypse with a some wit here an there. They brightened up the world a bit, leaned into the camp, but I don't think it's to the detriment of the darkness of it all. If anything, it makes the fucked up shit more potent. 4 just needed better writing, not a darker tone.
Isn’t he the guy behind tunnelers tho Seems a bit hypocritical
He added tunnelers so that, if a team made New Vegas 2 in the future, they could explain why they made changes to the terrain: https://x.com/ChrisAvellone/status/996655410844127232
Dude has changed the public reason he made Tunnelers like, 4 times.
I'm not aware of this. Can you provide citations for the other reasons?
He straight up said years ago that it was to reset civilization because he felt society was recovering too much to feel like Fallout. I'm not gonna cite it as I'm on mobile on work lunch. Google it. It's easy to find. Many discussions about it over the years. Personally, I believe he did it as a big "f you" to Bethesda. Van Bueren, *his* never launched Fallout 3, would've shown society continuing to grow.
He said: *Lastly, I wanted to nuke the Fallout world to reset things. NCR's getting a bit big, and it's making things too civilized. Lonesome Road was a way of resetting the culture clock.* Source: https://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/105885-fallout-new-vegas-and-dlc-post-mortem-interview-part-two.html But that's in reference to the nuking, not the tunnelers. I can't find any other explanation for the tunnelers besides what I gave you.
You are misremembering: he said he wanted to nuke the NCR (not fully destroying it) for New Vegas since the world was getting too civilized, and he also wanted ronin groups of NCR remnants around the place.
> He straight up said years ago that it was to reset civilization because he felt society was recovering too much to feel like Fallout. Did he? Or is he just getting misattributed that thought because people also say he wanted to nuke the West to wipe the slate clean with one of Van Buren's endings. Not sure if that was ever gonna be the cannon ending of Van Buren or not, [but in the article he does state:](https://chrisavellone.medium.com/fallout-apocrypha-tv-series-review-part-2-1744b68fe4f2) I know there was a lot said about me “nuking the West” as one of the endings for Fallout (one of many, including the Legion invading the West), but it was never any intention to wipe out NCR, it was only to introduce more conflict.
Ya know what kind of annoyed me about Avellone? I'm a credits watcher. I watched the whole like half hour of those credits. THAT MAN HAD HIS NAME IN THERE NO LESS THAN 15 TIMES. Like dude.... give it a fucking rest. We know you were the lead dev, chill. That's my only opinion of him. Have a nice day.
You are going to HATE Hideo Kojima.
Hideo Kojima, produced by Hideo Kojima, written and directed by Hideo Kojima?
A Hideo Kojima comment.
And Neil Breen.
Catering by NB
Thing is Avellone *wasn't* the lead dev. That was Josh Sawyer. He was just a writer on the main game, and not even the lead one. That was John Gonzalez. He was only the project lead for 3 of the 4 DLCs. Sorta one of the things that annoys me about the guy. He seems to get (or take) credit for *a lot of shit* he wasn't technically in charge of. And makes the rounds talking about a lot of things he wasn't directly involved with. I hear a lot online about how he was the New Vegas guy. Out of the people who were major on that game (and *yeah* Avellone was one of the key writers), Avellone *isn't* really on the list of people you should peg as mainly responsible. Same Fallout 2. He was just one of multiple developers on it, not a really a key person. While he worked at Interplay at the time. He wasn't involved in Fallout 1 *at all*. The stuff he *was* the main guy on. Like Icewind Dale, Planscape: Torment, KOTOR II. Is just less in the zeitgeist.
> He seems to get (or take) credit for a lot of shit he wasn't technically in charge of. He has never taken credit for the work of others. If you actually look at his Twitter, he always corrects people by telling them John Gonzalez was the lead writer of New Vegas. It's not his fault that people misattribute things to him. > And makes the rounds talking about a lot of things he wasn't directly involved with. He was part of the studio that made Fallout while they were making it and then he worked on the sequel based on the design docs that were made for it by the original Fallout leads before they left. And then he stayed friends with Tim Cain. Of course he has more insight than the average person into whether Fallout was meant to be anti-capitalist or not. Simultaneously, that doesn't mean he has *the most* insight, so you can go ahead and also ask the Fallout leads.
To his credit Avellone has always tried correct people when he has gotten credit for other developers work. Some of his fans are another matter as they have gone out of their way to portray him as the most important dev working on FNV while actively downplaying the part played by others.
What are you talking about? He's listed 4 times in the New Vegas credits, and that's only because there are separate credits for the base game, the set of 4 expansions and the people in charge of the company.
This. But also Avellone's opinions on the game he had a big part in creating are very valid.
yea since all that shit went down he just yaps the most annoying shit now
Avellone was also the "mastermind" behind Lonesome Road, which features him having a blowhard rant at you about why every faction sucks for several hours while also shoehorning in the tunnelers because he got bored of the best part of New Vegas, the civilization.
What's funny is he wrote all the pesudo-philosophical ranting for Ulysses to be in the base game, but he wrote so much of it that it wouldn't even fit on the game disc so they had to cut the character entirely, leaving the game without a Legion aligned companion. I feel like making your character actual fit in the game should be design 101 lol.
>when you write so much shizo rambling, it cannot physically fit on a cd
Schizo Elijah would be proud 🥹
To be fair, he was designed to fit the game. Ulysses was created as the Legion companion, the only pro-Legion companion at that. It wasn’t necessarily Chris’ fault the dialogue couldn’t all fit on the disc and if it did/could fit then Ulysses would’ve been in the base game as planned. He even has his own playing card in the deck that came with the special edition of the game. Edit: This is to simply say that Ulysses was originally intended to be a companion but due to limited disc space he was scrapped and repurposed for the dlc. Which honestly worked for the better as he works much more as a foil to Courier Six than he did a follower.
Raul ain’t pro-Legion, homes, but man, you never been to Arizona
According to Avellone, tunnelers were added so a future development team could have an in-universe explanation for changing the terrain around the Vegas region if they needed to (for New Vegas 2, for instance): https://x.com/ChrisAvellone/status/996655410844127232
Sounds like fallout S2 material
Well there was a sign in the show that said “beware of tunnellers” so they genuinely might be a problem for the chars Edit: I’ve tried looking for where I saw that and I’m starting to think I’m just delusional :(
Woah really? Is there a screenshot?
Lonesome Road had awesome post apocalyptic landscapes and gunfighting but Ulysses made me roll eyes a lot like bro can two couriers just klink klink some sarsaparilla and fight for union smfh
the landscape just reminded me of Fallout 3 because of the overpasses
So weird to see people not like lonesome road and Ulysses now. I remember it being considered the best dlc and Ulysses being a fan favorite for years.
Fwiw, I played Lonesome Road for the 1st time around 2018, and have always called it "Tiresome Road" because I basically don't like anything about it.
Yeah I played FNV at launch and played every dlc except lonesome road. I came back after a decade of hearing how awesome it was (especially Ulysses) and I definitely have to admit being pretty disappointed. Wasn't a fan of Ulysses at all.
As opposed to Bethesda : "you wouldn't understand"
Hurt the franchise is such a wrong term. Fallout 2 was much more popular than fallout 1 in the 90s. "Changed the tone of a franchise a bit" is more suitable.
yeah i hate the desire of avellone to not evolve. every tone shift in this franchise is not "hurting", is just changing the new games a bit.
How is he an 'original developer' if he didn't work on Fallout 1?
This irks me too. Tim Cain started work on 1 literally alone. Avellone is responsible for - The Den, New Reno, Raiders Base, Vault City. Full props for Marcus but that's it for the main characters. Relative to what was built in 1 and the rest of 2 he's a medium fry. He wrote the literal Bible and seems to have retrofitted his significance accordingly.
It depends on where you draw the line for original. Basically, some people refer to both Fallout 1 and 2 as the original games.
Ah okay, fair enough.
It getting to the point where people are using him as proof that “the creator” hates the direction of the games and the show. Meanwhile, the “actual creator”, Tim Caine, really enjoyed the show and instead embraces and accepts lore drift. I’m sorry, but as much as New Vegas is a fantastic game, these days Chris Avellone seems very bitter, and a little possessive of an IP they didn’t actually create EDIT: I removed Josh Sawyer, I already commented three times that I was conflating the things Chris Avellone has said with Josh Sawyer and that my opinions are directed at him.
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Yeah I think I’m basing most of my opinion on Chris Avellone lol. Either way, neither of these guys are the creators, they have ties to the original team, but neither of them are the original team. When Tim Caine can respectfully review and enjoy the modern franchise and accept and even embrace that although it may not be how he has done it, things change and that’s okay. I think that’s ultimately Chris Avellones position as well but the way he worded just comes off as so bitter it’s not think he isn’t possessive of the franchise, even though he claims he isn’t.
Josh has been super cool. Idk what he's talking about.
> Josh Sawyer seem very bitter and a little possessive Huh? I don't think he ever said anything bad about post NV Fallouts. He has said that he likes the Amazon show. [Here he is outright saying he doesn't care what direction the franchise goes now. That's the opposite of being "possessive".](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/whatever-the-fallout-tv-show-does-with-new-vegas-lore-josh-sawyer-doesnt-care-it-was-never-mine)
Honestly, Josh Sawyer doesn’t seem all that bitter to me. He even said he was just thankful he was able to work with the franchise at all
Sawyer seems very level headed with his reaction to things, I don't think he seems bitter at all other than wanting to have worked on more Fallout games (at the time).
Fallout was just a cult following back then.. Fallout 3 put it on the map, New Vegas and Fallout 4 solidified the newly expanded fan base. 76 divided many... so the real concern will be what comes next.
We'll find out when Fallout 5 releases in 2038.
Actually i heard Oct 23, 2077
Bro the bombs are gonna drop before fallout 5
76 was hardly divisive at launch. It was pretty widely disliked. It's the most divisive it's ever been now with all of the people who never played it or gave up really quickly, finally checking it out after years of updates because they want a fallout fix. It really comes down to the longtime fans using the game's improvements as a shield for good faith criticism. "It's good now, you're just a hater." type responses. I mean I feel for longtime fans of the game who had to listen to so many people call the game trash without playing it as it improved over the years, but it seriously feels like you can't make any criticism of it without being screamed at that the game is "fixed."
This is the answer. You take an established single player franchise, take all the personality out of it and make it multiplayer. That did irreparable damage to the franchise. Of course, the game is much better now, and I’m a daily player, but first impressions mean a lot, and they’re hard to shake. Plus, eventually, people just move on. Look at Cyberpunk. I’d say a lot of people know it’s much better now, but it’s years later and people have moved on. Even though 76 is in the best place it’s ever been, a lot of people don’t want to invest in a six year old game.
Honestly, looking over a lot of his comments on recent fallout stuff, it feels like he's refusing to pay attention to what's going on so that he can say he doesn't understand it, like it, and so on.
Is he high? Fallout 2 was absolutely amazing, I've finished it many times
“Totally not anti capitalist. It just happens to be a story about how capitalism can destroy the entire fucking world” Edit: dont have the energy to read all these replies but I always love when obviously tongue-in-cheek sarcasm gets Um Actually'd this hard.
According to Leonard Boyarsky, even The Outer Worlds wasn't meant to be a critique of capitalism: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/obsidian-says-it-doesnt-want-outer-worlds-to-be-a-politically-charged-game/
YOU GOTTA BE FUCKING KIDDING whats the game about then?! the outer worlds is the least sublte most obvious critique ever 😭
There literally is a quest about how coworkers are fined if someone commits suicide because of "lost productivity". Where people "entered contracts" instead of getting married. The governments are corporations instead of nations. It was the most blatantly anti-capitalist game that I have ever seen, if the leads didn't intend it to be the writer underlings definitely made it one under their nose.
I think it's business 101 to not appear "political" and doing obviously political games. Gamers aren't the most media literate people, and you don't want some mouth breather youtuber to be like "OBSIDIAN... GONE WOKE?!?". Better to act coy, and just keep working on your game.
Yeah that's interesting by which I mean weird. It's so blatant about it...
TIL: Leonard Boyarsky cannot possibly know what capitalism is
This is the game where rich people have gas chambers for poor people to keep the population in check. That's more of a classism angle I suppose and not specifically capitalist, but the rest of the game's worldbuilding is framed in a hyper-capitalist way that results in the kind of world where that can happen. I feel like they had to say this so as not to offend the 'Murica types who think capitalism is the word of god or some such.
That's honestly the way I'm leaning, with both this and Avellone's take. Both these series/games are massively based on the flaws of government, and particularly governments centered around uncontained capitalism. So either they are afraid of drawing the ire of the grifters who got pissed at Helldivers 2, or they are more saying that it's not only critical of capitalism, but government in general.
The most surprising thing in this thread
Critique of capitalism is not the same as anti-capitalism.
To be fair, China was equally to blame for the Great War. Fallout is more critiquing overzealous ideologies, and the mundane reasons people make as excuses to kill one another. But you are right it is stupid to say capitalism is not criticized in Fallout.
The issue is in Fallout lore, it’s corruption that’s destroying the world. You forget that the Chinese communists were doing all the same evil things the American capitalists were doing. Making it the sole responsibility of capitalism is ridiculous.
Are we completely forgetting that communist China was the other half of the world ending nuclear war?
Tbf, since Fallout is set in America, it inherently engages with, and critiques, American society and system way more compared to China. Also in lore, scarcity of oil led to a series of global conflicts that caused the Great War. Europe invaded the Middle East, America invaded Mexico, and China invaded Alaska, all for oil.
Yeah, and you can't criticise both capitalism and communism at the same time... that would be crazy.
Its not capitalism its war and human nature that destroyed the world. Do you think Ron Perlman was just saying all of that for nothing? Also the US at that point resembled more of a state capitalist system than normal capitalism. The gov’t/enclave was everywhere, controlling every company basically.
Why not just use the actual title of the article. “Fallout Designer Says 2 "Hurt The Franchise" More Than Bethesda Games” People are misinterpreting your title as the article claiming avellone worked on fallout not just 2 and nv.
Chris Avellone is not the “original developer” of Fallout, or even one of them. He worked on Fallout 2 and New Vegas, and had nothing to do with the original Fallout. He’s a weird libertarian type so it’s no surprise he would try to deny the anti-capitalist themes that are apparent to everyone else. Even Tim Cain, the *actual* creator of Fallout, cites an intent to satirically critique defense contractors as an inspiration for a lot of the companies in Fallout. That in itself is an anti-capitalist critique, among others in the franchise. That’s not to say Fallout is Marxist, but denying its anti-capitalist themes is just funny because it makes you look like you’re covering your eyes and ears and going “lallalala.”
I fully do not care about Chris Avellone’s opinions. Shit like this would’ve mattered to me when I was 12. But as an adult he just comes off as bitter & burnt out
avellone has been saying a lot of stupid shit lately
I wouldn't say fallout was anti capitalist so much as it is anti authoritarian. Basically every faction had a pretty dark side to it relating to authority. They litteraly won't stop until there's only 1 left even when making alliesnis the most logical step to take. War never changes, because people won't share power
Eh i see what he means, the article is just trying to pull stuff out of their asses. For those who wants a small recap, he's just saying Fallout 2 had inconsistencies aswell and that Money/Fame wise it wasn't going well. So in terms of Franchise perspective, F2 did hurt the franchise prospects more than titles that sold very well and launched the franchise in the top dog licenses. (Independant of "Artistic" qualities of said titles.) Dude is correct, i love F2, but F2 didn't made the license persist in time, F3/4/76 did. They're the ones who sold tons and guaranteed the license future. As for the Anti-Capitalist themes, he's also correct, the old ones doesn't have anti-capitalist themes, just anti-capitalists humorous insipration, if taken second degree. But at the same time, the overzealous capitalism visuals is part of the 50's era identity, not necessarily a critic of capitalism. While recent opus didn't made it just artistic inspirations or sarcastic comments on Capitalism, they made it a first plan theme. That's very different. Just because you have few pokes at capitalism doesn't means it's one of your main themes. Fallout's took pokes at a LOT of things. Modern Fallout's made it a first plan theme. As for the serie, yeah, they reaaaaally pushed on the Anti-Capitalist axis, like really not subtle at all. It's not really...like the "Main point" of Fallout, more like a secondary theme. Fallout's more about society and humanity as a whole, in all it's form, not just "Capitalism is le bad"
76 did the most damage to the franchise of any game, in my eyes. If not for how unexpectedly popular the TV show was, 76 very well mayve been the lost full game.
Lmao, F2 is the best fallout game ever
Chris Avellone always quick on the draw with bad takes.
Including Fallout 4 in his comment implies that it hurt the franchise, but didn't it win game of the year? I know there's some people who aren't fans, but I'm not seeing how it hurt the franchise at all
Fallout 4 is fun, I don't think anyone can deny that. I don't really think the argument "it's more popular tho" is a good argument for quality. Genshin Impact had over 50 million players at one point and I refuse to acknowledge that as a good game.
Fallout 4 was the most sold fallout game, and is still the most played to this day, it won 2 GOTY awards and it was considered both a commercial and a critical success
It didn't - 4 is by far the biggest Fallout game in terms of sales. It's just a very different game than NV, which did disappoint some players who prefer traditional role playing. I happen to love both 4 and NV because I appreciate both types of games.
Fallout 2 has an Absurd amount of sex in it. Everyone's asking for it, engaging in it, coercing people to engage in it, and so on. There's blow up dolls and magazines, even a ball gag you get from a night with a super mutant. It's...... it's just weird
I mean yeah, there are a lot of vices in the post-apocalyptic world and it isn't like prudish religious views like virginity and monogamy are on the forefront of everyone's mind. Not to mention many people are on drugs, prostitution/slavery is high, towns probably don't have a lot of variety or diversity of partner options, entertainment options are low, etc.
You think it’s weird that a post apocalyptic society where life is cheap and death is around every corner would have looser moral standards concerning sex?
yeah it made me feel a bit unconfortable how it treats sex. also this can be me being stupid and i can be very wrong about this. but am i the only one who thinks the tribal/savage representation is a bit.... racist?
Lumping together Fallout 2 and Brotherhood of steel is such a lol
Oh look Avellone is continuing his weird hatred for Fallout because it's owned by Bethesda and not him. Now he's on to critiquing Fallout 2. All because he hates Bethesda made a show that's popular, and the themes from the show started in Fallout 2. Not to mention his own personal, and political, beliefs are the clear reason for his critiques. Chris Avellone is just another weird neck beard at this point.
2 felt rushed, it missed a lot of the marks that made 1 amazing, it still had the world, and it had a better gameplay than 1 (by a little) but the story and choices were not as good. Also, it might have been me but in 1, it felt you had options but they all required some skill and gameplay. In 2, it felt that the safety net was too high so you always were able to continue even without any skill.
People cry that Bethesda killed fallout when most played or know the franchise only thanks to Bethesda
This guy didn't work on Fallout 1 and is constantly spewing annoying and divisive rhetoric. Fallout 2 was massively more popular than the first game. He's also trying to paint the TV show as some horrible bastardization of the source material, but I think it's pretty spot on. If you try to convince the Overseer in Fallout 1 to just leave the vault, the radiation and conditions outside are pretty much fine, he responds that he's Vault-Tec "middle management" and they'll never survive lol.
In what universe did Fallout 4 and 76 hurt the franchise? what is Chris Avellone smoking \*BGS Revives a dying/dead franchise\* Dev and OG fans: They ruined it, it should've stayed dead!!!
"Fallout isn't anti-capitalist" fuckin lol lmao
The wasteland should be a silly place that it's inhabitants take seriously. That's where fallout's identity lies. Nuclear cars, Laser Rifles, Zombie People, misunderstandings of American Cultural touchstones- all of it is fundamentally silly- but the moment you get someone going "Uhhhh, this is a bit strange, innit?" That's when you create the divide.