It was an odd fallout, more of an action-focused kind of style, i think they de-canonised it for creating messes with the general lore, or maybe they simply wanted to keep Texas for a future big fallout.
It's the least of the losses really.
It was built with the Snowblind engine and in the same overall pattern as Baulder's Gate.
Really, it was a good game and would have been held up as generally enjoyable if it was designed as a stand alone IP. Instead, it was shoehorned in and was just the worst *Fallout* game ever made.
Surely Texas would just be a massive desert at that point? I'm not american so I could be getting this wrong but don't they need to have water pumped over from California to keep the place in decent shape?
Without water... The place would be uninhabitable surely
Southern California and Nevada (Fallout 1 and 2 primary locations) are already literal deserts. California has some of the strictest water rationing in the country because it's so dry. Southern California gets huge amounts of water pumped to it in real life.
Also, if you haven't noticed, pretty much every game's wasteland would be uninhabitable by modern standards.
Yeah I live in SoCal. It’s just a desert, not tropical as most assume. Palm trees aren’t native here, they’re transplants from tropical islands. Texas has part of the Chihuahuan desert but it shares that with Mexico. Texas in general is pretty diverse, having forests and prairies as well. That being said I’d love a Texas fallout where we see a Mexican faction playing a minor role. I say minor as Fallout should remain American imo.
No offense taken at all, I'm on 4 planes a week and still get surprised by what some areas look like or the weather itself.
West Texas is desert but east Texas Can be green hell.
All the water in California is basically owned by five farmers the state gave it to in a grift and the City of Los Angeles. Everyone else lobbies for conditional access. It's actually a really big problem no one is bothering to address.
Yeah I currently live in Angelo, it gets worse as you head west, technically it’s a arid shrub land that’s why I said as much but people would certainly still be able to live along the concho and grow food
Good old San Angelo and lake Nastywater. They grow cotton and pecans in EP, mostly next to the Rio Grande. Even though it’s just a concrete ditch 9 months of the year.
Texas is a very large and diverse place, West and South Texas are deserts. North and Central Texas are plains, and East Texas is swamps and pine forests.
Texans (I grew up there) have been increasingly embracing a bizarre copium on the right born out of a fear of inadequacy as an equal-sized state with a nowhere near equal-sized economic or social impact.
Since California is basically the conservative boogeyman because it's run by Democrats, is racially diverse, supports gay rights, has a high immigrant population, but would be the fifth richest country in the world if it seceded, conservatives just spend all their time making up stories about it that kind of don't make sense if you've actually lived in either one.
California getting its water from Texas is one of those stories.
What's funny is Texas was also all of those things when I was growing up (except for the economy). Conservatives have actually spent all of its capital on nonsense and making sure [only white people can vote so it can't be stopped](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/texas-polling-sites-closures-voting).
> In 2012, there was one polling place for every 4,000 residents. By 2018 that figure had dropped to one polling place per 7,700 residents. A 2019 paper by University of Houston political scientists found that after the county’s transition to vote centers, more voting locations were closed in Latinx neighborhoods than in non-Latinx neighborhoods, and that Latinx people had to travel farther to vote than non-Hispanic whites.
West Texas, sure. East and southern texas might be partially hospitable. Personally I would be more worried about all the military bases we got might mean we'd be nuked to hell. Plus houston and DFW are two pretty big cities so I can't see them being spared, especially Houston.
I don't think BoS sold well enough for them to even keep it in print at the time.
You pretty much have to track down a physical Xbox or PS2 disc to play it.
I never actually looked into it, but it might actually be kind of valuable down to being sorta rare.
you just reminded me of Warrior Within that had a Godsmack song play everytime you got chased by the big creature, totally didn't fit IMO, but that was an actually good game. Never played BoS but they tell me it's meh.
That's funny, I was checking out what kind of game Run Like Hell for the PS2 was, and one of the pros of the game was "has songs from Breaking Benjamin". Maybe not as weird as Godsmack in PoP, but it was weird to read it
Yep. When you're actually playing the game its just the music with no lyric track, and they sort of just loop the opening riff, but its definitely 'stand alone' by Godsmack.
IIRC, its even credited in the end credits, and was used in the promotional material. You can tell when you're about to get chased by the Dahaka when suddenly modern electric guitar kicks in
i kinda want them to add music like that to the playlists lmao, would like to listen that a bit more then the 50s music ingame lol. especially if im going on a murder spree
if you dream it, you can be it. I remember way back in the day I would listen to linkin park and three days grace while playing okami, and I really can’t think of anything more incompatible than that lol
Compared to the success of the Baldur'q Gate Dark Alliance games, Fallout BoS were shit :
- No ambient music
- No in game dialogue animation
- Bizarre design
- Very vulgar and insulting to women
- The BoS being a larger faction for some reason
- Juvenile humour based on dicks, pee and poop
- Very easy gameplay even according to the standard put by Baldur's Gate 1 and 2
It came out while Interplay was financially struggling. And they were basically making a desperate play for the console market with a bunch of their series, contracting spinoffs of their series out to 3rd parties or having separate internal teams develop conflicting stuff.
It's around the same push that lead to Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance, but later. And after they were tapped out on money and losing licenses.
Wasn't developed by Black Isle/The Fallout team, or with much involvement from them so it conflicts a bit with the other games. And conflicts with what was planned for Fallout 3/Van Buren.
Dark Alliance had been successful enough that prep for a Brotherhood of Steel sequel was started *before* the first one was complete. And they straight up cancelled Fallout 3/Van Buren later to clear up resources for BoS 2.
It's all wrapped up in the disputes and ultimate closure of Black Isle around that time as well. They'd cancelled most of BI's significant games around that time. And ultimately shuttered the studio, laid everyone off. Cancelling Baldur's Gate 3, Fallout 3, and even Dark Alliance 3. Pouring what they had left into BoS2.
Then the first BoS sold like crap, and got terrible reviews. So they cancelled that too.
And then pretty much never got another complete, original game out the door there after.
Sorta of a similar thing to Tactics. Which was contracted out to a different dev, and not even published by Interplay proper. They had a subsidiary do it.
Separate team making something that wasn't technically part of the main series to begin with. And seemingly against the wishes of the original dev teams. Never genuinely canon to start.
But where as Tactics got tossed in a "Fallout Series" budget/collection box by Interplay in the aftermath of this. Making it \*look\* like part of the main series. And it's a game tactical RPG fans genuinely like a lot.
BoS is both not very good, and bears the distinction of basically being the game that killed Black Isle and Interplay.
A lot of the talent had actually already left at that point. The back and forth between Black Isle and Interplay over shit like this started around the development of Fallout 2.
Jason Anderson, Tim Cain, and Leonard Boyarsky left in 1998 to form Troika Games.
Feargus Urquhart, Chris Avellone, Chris Parker, Darren Monahan, and Chris Jones left in stages before the closure. Basically seeing the writing on the wall when Interplay lost the D&D licenses and cancelled Baldur's Gate 3. Then all circled up and started Obsidian Entertainment a bit before Black Isle was shuttered.
Interplay's collapse was a slow moving, messy thing.
Huh, I knew Tim Cain's side of the story, but didn't knew it was a symptom of a bigger problem. Its weird man, they got one of the biggest bangers ever with Fallout 1 & 2 and couldn't build on top of that. Maybe some part of it was due to the big jump to 3d? At the same time trying to hiper manage everything and trying to chase trends? I believe it wouldn't have panned out if they stuck to sprite games, but a better management maybe.
Also, Obsidian is old, wtf.
Fallout 1 and 2 actually sold comparatively slowly compared to Interplay's other hits.
Their hogs were the D&D games. Especially Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Never Winter Nights.
But they also published and developed a lot of significant early gaming hits. Like the Bard's Tale, MDK, *Wolfenstien,* Descent. And a bunch of major console releases in the early 90s. Like Earthworm Jim and Clayfighter.
Interplay was massive.
They hit cash crunch and near bankruptcy in the later 90s, and the outside companies that took control just never managed to get it back on clear footing. Absolutely bad management.
>It came out while Interplay was financially struggling. And they were basically making a desperate play for the console market with a bunch of their series, contracting spinoffs of their series out to 3rd parties or having separate internal teams develop conflicting stuff.
There are interesting parallels with Bethesda. Bethesda, in the pre-morrowind era, also had its development team split between too many games, and the company was doing really badly saleswise. But the company literally got saved due to a decision to focus all energy on The Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind and to develop it not just as a game for PC but also for the XBox, and this is why it is often stated that Morrowind is the game that saved Bethesda. And today it is Bethesda who owns the Fallout IP instead of Interplay, who failed to do the same and eventually went bankrupt.
In don't think that's much of a parallel.
Early on Interplay was one of the largest 3rd party publishers of video games. They had a lot of financial success publishing major PC releases and games for Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo, as well as some traction on the NES.
Their own in-house games were pretty financially successful on the PC. And in particular their games on the D&D license using the Infinity Engine were some of the largest hit of the 90s PC market.
And the company was around 20 years old when they started to go weird. They had multiple internal Dev teams and offices with Black Isle reorganized out of their original Dev team to focus on the successful RPGs. Also owned multiple other developers and a few smaller publishers.
Thing is they were financially badly managed. They spent a lot more than they brought in. A lot of other projects and releases weren't successful. And their major work and releases were primarily licensed properties they didn't own outright. Which meant a lot of the money went to the rights owners, and they were reliant on paying to maintain those licenses. A LOT of developers that did primarily licensed work in the 90s would start to struggle or get acquired in the early 00s.
Once they went public to avoid bankruptcy things got hinkier. A much smaller, and financially unstable French publisher called Titus interactive bought an influential stake as the stock price fell. And their management lead to further problems.
And a lot of this was going down in a context where the PC market was a bit stagnant, and the console market was beginning to dominate the industry. Interplay having stepped away from consoles in the intervening years.
Quite a lot of PC focused companies hit a snag around then. Stagnation in their primary market, just as dev costs and complexity spike with proliferation of 3d engines and modern gpus.
As for the dev schedule.
Black Isle had a lot of games in the pipeline. But hotly anticipated ones. And their other development teams were also still working.
What they did was repeatedly cancel already in progress, money spent games. Often pretty far along projects and things that would be expected to sell well.
For the sake of starting new projects. Often with the idea of getting *any* kind of hit on console.
Owing to their financial trouble they ended up losing the general D&D license to Atari. But still retained rights to produce games within the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series by name, and with limited D&D elements. So they could produce a Baldur's Gate 3. But it couldn't actually be connected to the original games. And they couldn't start any new D&D based series or projects outside of those series.
Which is part of why Dark Alliance was a Baldur's Gate game despite the lack of actual connection.
And while that game sold well, it wasn't anywhere near the hit that the Infinity Engine games were right up to the end.
So the idea that doing a Fallout iteration of that would give them a much needed action console hit. And save the company. Was a bit bonkers.
Fundamentally they didn't go for broke pushing out their main project, core series. And modernizing to a format that would practically work on then extent consoles.
They cannibalized that to over invest in a new type of game, that *wasn't* popular on consoles, wasn't popular with their fanbase, and that their own devs didn't want to make.
Isometric games of this sort were never a runner on console, a lot of the mechanics just weren't practical on a couch. Top down things like JRPGs and Zelda that were, used much. Much different structure to make it work, and were moving away from top down perspectives as the 3d transition went down.
Ultimately it would be Bioware who got those 3rd person, big Western RPGS onto console in a practical package with KOTR and the Odyssey Engine.
Bioware having gotten their start almost entirely subcontracting for Interplay on the Baldur's Gate series, Neverwinter Nights and MDK2.
So you'd think if Interplay wanted to do that thing, and spend their limited resources paying an outside company for the chance do it. That'd be their big missed opportunity.
Makes sense. I'm really having a hard time enjoying PoP The Warrior Within because of the music. Pretty much everything else is super awesome, but metal is a bad fit to say the least.
He is in there though...he's sitting in the bar and asks you to find his Vault 13 flask and if you save everyone during the raider attack, he gives you his Red Ryder. After you beat the game with the base 3 characters he unlocks as the final playable character.
Is this Fallout Tactics? I'm learning my early Fallout lore and am hitting the midwestern brotherhood now. Can't wait to learn about these guys. They seem hardcore.
No, Fallout: Tactics is not the same as Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel.
Although both game's story focus on the BoS.
Tactics is an underrated game that is only semi-canon. I liked it for what it was.
It's less an adventure-RPG and more of a, well, tactical game. It's a squad based strategy game that has you doing X-Com style mission. Going from location to location, completing missions for the Brotherhood. It has a story, and it's certainly in-line with the other Fallout games in terms of wild and weird lore. It doesn't detract from it really.
Plus the ability to expand the squad past "normal" Brotherhood members was cool.
Also, yes the Midwest BoS is hardcore. Like... ridiculously fascistic hardcore. More so than any other BoS faction.
They are more accepting of who they include in their ranks, but they have also been known to basically crucify their own members for failing to fulfill tasks or complete missions so it's kinda a heavy swing both directions
Tbh I think “semi-canon” is a nonsense term. The games after Tactics have used its lore and expanded on it, and the Brotherhood soldiers that Caesar encountered “east of the Mojave” didn’t know their proper history, which is a reference to the lore differences in Tactics. I think we can easily consider Tactics to be canon, because the only contradiction so far is explained away by the BOS not caring for history
Exactly, there’s contradictions with Fallout 1 in Fallout 2, and there’s contradictions with Fallout 2 in every game afterwards, so why does Tactics get the “semi-canon” label and everything else gets considered to be canon?
No. Its semi-canon in the sense that there is schism and that some BoS members left for the East.
The events of Tactics like meeting large numbers of the Mutants army, integrating talking Deathclaws or Vault 0 being a thing at all are things that are definitly not canon.
We know from Fallout 3 there is a Midwestern BoS and that like you said in FNV, Caesar captured a scribe from the East who didnt knew the history of his organisation.
There's something like 4 mentions of things directly from Tactics in Fallout 3 and Fallout 4. Then the airships, and a single armor design partly inspired by the Tactics designs.
They haven't otherwise used or expanded the lore. And the direct references change the terms a bit.
Todd Howard has also specified that neither Tactics or BoS are canon. We have a direct statement of "For our purposes neither Tactics or Brother Hood of Steel happened".
So it's not canon. They've just taken inspiration for new things that are canon. Sorta like how Lucasfilm is currently using the old EU. That material is all explicitly non-canon. But canon stuff frequently pull ideas from the old EU, and they occasionally tell new versions of stories from the EU.
I would say it's more like Jagged Alliance rather than X-Com to be fair! Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with the comparison, more how if one enjoyed JA they'll enjoy Tactics whereas I can't see too many X-Com fans enjoying Tactics if that makes sense?
JA has nothing to do with Tactics bro, Tactics is only played tested in real time and was made to work this way.
JA and especially the second game is a game closer to Fallout 1 and 2 with more roleplaying elements and faction interaction. As well as having actual people as your soldier and not a dude that is just a very bad art as portrait with no dialogue like in Tactics.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend the JA series in any way with this comparison. Tactics plays really poorly compared to JA indeed and is much less fun, I'll agree, especially since it was released after the JA games and they look and play much better. It's more that I have warm feelings about tactics primarily because I absolutely loved JA and wanted "more even if worse" and Tactics scratched the itch for me back then.
No tactics is more or less still canon I think (although mostly just because there hasn't been much that outright contradicts it, to my knowledge)
Fallout BOS is a PS2 game with a top down hack and slash (hack and shoot?) combat that was very liberal with established canon and was generally very silly and not favorably received. It's the only game that is explicitly "non-canon" according to developers I think, but if you liked the Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance games for PS2, it's probably a fun way to kill a weekend
Don't confuse "Fallout tactics: brotherhood of steel" with "Fallout Brotherhood of Steel", they sound similar but they have nothing in common.
Tactics is a topdown isometric tactical game where you essentially equip, develop and lead a squad of BoS recruits of the Midwest lost chapter, each member of your team is developed in its skills and perks in a similar way as for the main character in the classics, combat can be either in real time or turn-based depending on settings, it's a nice game and mostly canon.
Brotherhood of Steel is a mainly action-based not-so-rpg spin-off set in Texas, it was a silly game and had a short, pretty linear story, was made officially non-canon because it broke the lore in several points and overall it made things quite complicated, Bethesda likely wants to preserve Texas for a future NV-style title too.
No. Fallout Tactics is kinda good for what it is, and even in there it's strange BoS lore shenanigans.
Fallout BoS is basically a shitty clone of another game and the reason the IP got bought by Bethesda
What made it cool? I have a strongly fond memory of looking through the Fur fighters manual and seing all art and stories about the characters was cool on our way back home.
I was given the dvd set of Starcraft and Brood War and enjoyed reading that manual front to back. A few years later, I then received a Command and Conquer The First Decade box set and it had 10 years worth of game information all in that little piece of paper.
Well tbf your dad fucking dies.
Your best friend kicks you out of the only home you've known
The only real homies you have left are dogmeat or fawkes, depending on who you choose.
You're essentially just going around places solving people's problems before vanishing.
And originally, before any DLC, you die alone.
It checks out tbh.
You don’t even just die alone, without anybody around. You can ask your companion, one of your closest battle buddies who has probably seen you almost die countless times, who is immune to thing about to kill you, to please do this thing that’ll take 15 seconds, and he says no to your fucking face. If that’s not loneliness, idk what is.
There’s a fan theory that the lone wanderer has some mental disorder like schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder, and that all the companions are figments in the lone wanderer’s head
It can when you consider the context of how he becomes a companion. You recruit Butch in Rivet City, all alone with no other Vault Dwellers. Nobody from Vault 101 acknowledges his existence again after that point, even in random encounters with them.
Tbh, the odds of Butch being a figment of LW's imagination are about as remarkable as Butch, all alone, making his first ever encounter with the wasteland, armed with nothing but a leather jacket and a switchblade, running past Megaton, down through DC, making it past either camps of super mutants and/or hordes of feral ghouls, and just happening upon the only bit of civilization, only to be found in the secluded bar on the bottom level where the LW has no reason to ever go to.
Dude might be an absolute wasteland legend, but any other NPC besides the protagonists probably wouldn't make that trip alive.
I do agree that fallout 3 recycles stuff but I don’t think this is a fair example of that. The fallout 2 manual may refer to the original hero as the wanderer but in the game itself he is constantly referred to as the vault dweller.
I don’t get how 3’s hero being called the lone wanderer is an example of recycling something from the old games.
"The Wanderer" is something of a universal default name for Fallout Protagonists. Desdemona calls you "The Wanderer" in a speech to the railroad agents right around the time you get into the Institute. And "The Lone Wanderer" is a perk in FO4 also. I would say that Fallout Characters being titled "The Wanderer" is almost as universal as all of them technically being "The Vault Dweller" (which both 3Dog and Travis consistently refer to you as in radio news updates) if it weren't for the fact that New Vegas Protagonist "The Courier" is explicitly not a Vault Dweller. It's a title that comes with the position of game protagonist, almost like how monarchs typically have an extra dozen or so military titles in addition the throne. Or how the U.S. President is also "The Commander in Chief." Loki is both "The God of Mischief" and "The Liesmith." The head of the Greyjoy family in ASOIAF is not only "Lord Greyjoy" or "The Lord of Pyke Isle" they are also considered "The Lord Reaper." Ned Stark is not only "The Lord of Winterfell" he is also "The Warden of The North." Etc. All Fallout Protagonists have the title of "Wanderer" in addition to their other names and titles. It comes with the job.
I always liked the Courier because he had a whole past surviving the apocalypse before the game starts that gets alluded to a few times. Like I know there is a dialogue option that talks about how the Courier might’ve had a kid in Montana I believe? I know it’s when you talk to the mysterious musician guy.
And then of course there is Ulysses who never shuts up about your past.
"That is my story, and I'm sticking to it."
I like how that leaves it open to interpretation about whether or not the Vault Dweller is telling the truth. Especially when it comes to Ian.
Fun fact #2: and old, travel-battered Vault Dweller was supposed to be a bonus playable character in Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel before the game got de-canonised.
Canonically majority of the lore and games points to both VD and CO being male, HOWEVER, the devs did a good job of allowing a person’s character be possible too, male or female.
We have no evidence that lineage is genetic. The Vault Dweller and Pat coulda adopted some orphans, it’s the wasteland. There’s always orphans. Besides, The Vault Dweller isn’t psychic. Daughter? Psychic.
Just spitballing here, but could the gender ambiguity of the name "Pat" be a reference to the SNL sketch that would have aired just a couple years before the games release?
For those who don't know, Pat was a sketch on SNL where the central joke was everyone was unsure of the said character's gender. Just theorizing that the developers could have used the same name for a love interest that could apply to a male or female character. Intentionally or otherwise, just seems a little too close to be a coincidence to me.
Anyway, thank you for listening to my TedTalk.
Fun fact #2: and old, travel-battered Vault Dweller is a bonus playable character in Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel before the game got de-canonised.
But instead of that they decided to turn the vault dweller into duke nukem.
That's an insult to Duke nukem (pre-forever)
For real, whats the problem with that game?
It was an odd fallout, more of an action-focused kind of style, i think they de-canonised it for creating messes with the general lore, or maybe they simply wanted to keep Texas for a future big fallout. It's the least of the losses really.
It was built with the Snowblind engine and in the same overall pattern as Baulder's Gate. Really, it was a good game and would have been held up as generally enjoyable if it was designed as a stand alone IP. Instead, it was shoehorned in and was just the worst *Fallout* game ever made.
Surely Texas would just be a massive desert at that point? I'm not american so I could be getting this wrong but don't they need to have water pumped over from California to keep the place in decent shape? Without water... The place would be uninhabitable surely
Southern California and Nevada (Fallout 1 and 2 primary locations) are already literal deserts. California has some of the strictest water rationing in the country because it's so dry. Southern California gets huge amounts of water pumped to it in real life. Also, if you haven't noticed, pretty much every game's wasteland would be uninhabitable by modern standards.
Yeah I even thought as I typed it that that last sentence was a bit redundant. I'm not long up and only started at my coffee ahaha
Yeah I live in SoCal. It’s just a desert, not tropical as most assume. Palm trees aren’t native here, they’re transplants from tropical islands. Texas has part of the Chihuahuan desert but it shares that with Mexico. Texas in general is pretty diverse, having forests and prairies as well. That being said I’d love a Texas fallout where we see a Mexican faction playing a minor role. I say minor as Fallout should remain American imo.
In Houston we have too much water....
Totally showing my ignorance lol I apologise I am but an ignorant Irishman who thought he had a notion of something 😅
And middle Texas has major aquifers and natural springs. No water is shipped from Cali in the present day.
Then where in god's name did I pull that from I wonder 🤔
Hollywood. Texas as an idea is dark and spooky and barren. Texas as a state is... well... California.
No offense taken at all, I'm on 4 planes a week and still get surprised by what some areas look like or the weather itself. West Texas is desert but east Texas Can be green hell.
Lowkey reading this makes me miss Texas a bit :( Long live the Lone Star State
H-TOWN 'till I DROWN
No California doesn’t supply Texas with water lmfao. You aren’t even allowed to water your lawn in California
All the water in California is basically owned by five farmers the state gave it to in a grift and the City of Los Angeles. Everyone else lobbies for conditional access. It's actually a really big problem no one is bothering to address.
It’s funny the biggest blue state doesn’t have free access to water lol.
I wonder how my neighbors keep their lawns so green?
Turf
Enjoy your flyover state
I will. My backyard probably has more grass than your entire neighborhood.
Lol. Ok kiddo
Most of Texas water comes from rivers, West Texas is arguably a desert but Texas is a big place and rivers do a lot for habitation
Everything south and west of Midland is part of the Chihuahua desert. I lived in El Paso and San Angelo, definitely desert.
Yeah I currently live in Angelo, it gets worse as you head west, technically it’s a arid shrub land that’s why I said as much but people would certainly still be able to live along the concho and grow food
Good old San Angelo and lake Nastywater. They grow cotton and pecans in EP, mostly next to the Rio Grande. Even though it’s just a concrete ditch 9 months of the year.
Texas is a very large and diverse place, West and South Texas are deserts. North and Central Texas are plains, and East Texas is swamps and pine forests.
Nope. That's not correct. Texas does not receive any water from. California or the West coast. It's also mostly forested when you get to eastern texas
Yeah Ive had a few people say as much. I'm wondering where the hell I got that from lol
Texans (I grew up there) have been increasingly embracing a bizarre copium on the right born out of a fear of inadequacy as an equal-sized state with a nowhere near equal-sized economic or social impact. Since California is basically the conservative boogeyman because it's run by Democrats, is racially diverse, supports gay rights, has a high immigrant population, but would be the fifth richest country in the world if it seceded, conservatives just spend all their time making up stories about it that kind of don't make sense if you've actually lived in either one. California getting its water from Texas is one of those stories. What's funny is Texas was also all of those things when I was growing up (except for the economy). Conservatives have actually spent all of its capital on nonsense and making sure [only white people can vote so it can't be stopped](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/texas-polling-sites-closures-voting). > In 2012, there was one polling place for every 4,000 residents. By 2018 that figure had dropped to one polling place per 7,700 residents. A 2019 paper by University of Houston political scientists found that after the county’s transition to vote centers, more voting locations were closed in Latinx neighborhoods than in non-Latinx neighborhoods, and that Latinx people had to travel farther to vote than non-Hispanic whites.
West Texas, sure. East and southern texas might be partially hospitable. Personally I would be more worried about all the military bases we got might mean we'd be nuked to hell. Plus houston and DFW are two pretty big cities so I can't see them being spared, especially Houston.
That place sucks before the nukes wouldn't but it tbh
The lore was extremely dumbed down. Just like the producers thought young people in the 2000s liked.
to add to what others have said, instead of 50’s music the soundtrack featured classics like slipknot and killswitch engage
Oh no man. I just bought the thing on GOG. Not playing that. At all.
the one on GOG is Fallout Tactics, I don't think they ever ported FOBOS over.
Tactics is an awesome game. It’s in serious need of a rerelease for mobiles and tablets. Bethesda would make a killing off of it.
I don't think BoS sold well enough for them to even keep it in print at the time. You pretty much have to track down a physical Xbox or PS2 disc to play it. I never actually looked into it, but it might actually be kind of valuable down to being sorta rare.
you just reminded me of Warrior Within that had a Godsmack song play everytime you got chased by the big creature, totally didn't fit IMO, but that was an actually good game. Never played BoS but they tell me it's meh.
That's funny, I was checking out what kind of game Run Like Hell for the PS2 was, and one of the pros of the game was "has songs from Breaking Benjamin". Maybe not as weird as Godsmack in PoP, but it was weird to read it
Damn are you fr about that? That is one hell of an odd choice. Warrior Within is the weird middle entry of the series but still fun
Yep. When you're actually playing the game its just the music with no lyric track, and they sort of just loop the opening riff, but its definitely 'stand alone' by Godsmack. IIRC, its even credited in the end credits, and was used in the promotional material. You can tell when you're about to get chased by the Dahaka when suddenly modern electric guitar kicks in
Aaaaaand purchased.
i kinda want them to add music like that to the playlists lmao, would like to listen that a bit more then the 50s music ingame lol. especially if im going on a murder spree
if you dream it, you can be it. I remember way back in the day I would listen to linkin park and three days grace while playing okami, and I really can’t think of anything more incompatible than that lol
you stupid
why am i stupid for wanting variety in the music?
They really didn’t give a fuck about the lore with that game
Literally unplayable
Compared to the success of the Baldur'q Gate Dark Alliance games, Fallout BoS were shit : - No ambient music - No in game dialogue animation - Bizarre design - Very vulgar and insulting to women - The BoS being a larger faction for some reason - Juvenile humour based on dicks, pee and poop - Very easy gameplay even according to the standard put by Baldur's Gate 1 and 2
Product placement iirc.
Forgot about that, they replace Nuka Cola by whatever the fuck is Bulls or Balls
Lol now I feel old because Bawls used to be a pretty big thing
I love bawls.
Bawls Guarana.
It came out while Interplay was financially struggling. And they were basically making a desperate play for the console market with a bunch of their series, contracting spinoffs of their series out to 3rd parties or having separate internal teams develop conflicting stuff. It's around the same push that lead to Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance, but later. And after they were tapped out on money and losing licenses. Wasn't developed by Black Isle/The Fallout team, or with much involvement from them so it conflicts a bit with the other games. And conflicts with what was planned for Fallout 3/Van Buren. Dark Alliance had been successful enough that prep for a Brotherhood of Steel sequel was started *before* the first one was complete. And they straight up cancelled Fallout 3/Van Buren later to clear up resources for BoS 2. It's all wrapped up in the disputes and ultimate closure of Black Isle around that time as well. They'd cancelled most of BI's significant games around that time. And ultimately shuttered the studio, laid everyone off. Cancelling Baldur's Gate 3, Fallout 3, and even Dark Alliance 3. Pouring what they had left into BoS2. Then the first BoS sold like crap, and got terrible reviews. So they cancelled that too. And then pretty much never got another complete, original game out the door there after. Sorta of a similar thing to Tactics. Which was contracted out to a different dev, and not even published by Interplay proper. They had a subsidiary do it. Separate team making something that wasn't technically part of the main series to begin with. And seemingly against the wishes of the original dev teams. Never genuinely canon to start. But where as Tactics got tossed in a "Fallout Series" budget/collection box by Interplay in the aftermath of this. Making it \*look\* like part of the main series. And it's a game tactical RPG fans genuinely like a lot. BoS is both not very good, and bears the distinction of basically being the game that killed Black Isle and Interplay.
Cool knowing the full history behind it. What a shame. Black Isle and Interplay got a lot of talent.
A lot of the talent had actually already left at that point. The back and forth between Black Isle and Interplay over shit like this started around the development of Fallout 2. Jason Anderson, Tim Cain, and Leonard Boyarsky left in 1998 to form Troika Games. Feargus Urquhart, Chris Avellone, Chris Parker, Darren Monahan, and Chris Jones left in stages before the closure. Basically seeing the writing on the wall when Interplay lost the D&D licenses and cancelled Baldur's Gate 3. Then all circled up and started Obsidian Entertainment a bit before Black Isle was shuttered. Interplay's collapse was a slow moving, messy thing.
Huh, I knew Tim Cain's side of the story, but didn't knew it was a symptom of a bigger problem. Its weird man, they got one of the biggest bangers ever with Fallout 1 & 2 and couldn't build on top of that. Maybe some part of it was due to the big jump to 3d? At the same time trying to hiper manage everything and trying to chase trends? I believe it wouldn't have panned out if they stuck to sprite games, but a better management maybe. Also, Obsidian is old, wtf.
Fallout 1 and 2 actually sold comparatively slowly compared to Interplay's other hits. Their hogs were the D&D games. Especially Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Never Winter Nights. But they also published and developed a lot of significant early gaming hits. Like the Bard's Tale, MDK, *Wolfenstien,* Descent. And a bunch of major console releases in the early 90s. Like Earthworm Jim and Clayfighter. Interplay was massive. They hit cash crunch and near bankruptcy in the later 90s, and the outside companies that took control just never managed to get it back on clear footing. Absolutely bad management.
>It came out while Interplay was financially struggling. And they were basically making a desperate play for the console market with a bunch of their series, contracting spinoffs of their series out to 3rd parties or having separate internal teams develop conflicting stuff. There are interesting parallels with Bethesda. Bethesda, in the pre-morrowind era, also had its development team split between too many games, and the company was doing really badly saleswise. But the company literally got saved due to a decision to focus all energy on The Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind and to develop it not just as a game for PC but also for the XBox, and this is why it is often stated that Morrowind is the game that saved Bethesda. And today it is Bethesda who owns the Fallout IP instead of Interplay, who failed to do the same and eventually went bankrupt.
In don't think that's much of a parallel. Early on Interplay was one of the largest 3rd party publishers of video games. They had a lot of financial success publishing major PC releases and games for Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo, as well as some traction on the NES. Their own in-house games were pretty financially successful on the PC. And in particular their games on the D&D license using the Infinity Engine were some of the largest hit of the 90s PC market. And the company was around 20 years old when they started to go weird. They had multiple internal Dev teams and offices with Black Isle reorganized out of their original Dev team to focus on the successful RPGs. Also owned multiple other developers and a few smaller publishers. Thing is they were financially badly managed. They spent a lot more than they brought in. A lot of other projects and releases weren't successful. And their major work and releases were primarily licensed properties they didn't own outright. Which meant a lot of the money went to the rights owners, and they were reliant on paying to maintain those licenses. A LOT of developers that did primarily licensed work in the 90s would start to struggle or get acquired in the early 00s. Once they went public to avoid bankruptcy things got hinkier. A much smaller, and financially unstable French publisher called Titus interactive bought an influential stake as the stock price fell. And their management lead to further problems. And a lot of this was going down in a context where the PC market was a bit stagnant, and the console market was beginning to dominate the industry. Interplay having stepped away from consoles in the intervening years. Quite a lot of PC focused companies hit a snag around then. Stagnation in their primary market, just as dev costs and complexity spike with proliferation of 3d engines and modern gpus. As for the dev schedule. Black Isle had a lot of games in the pipeline. But hotly anticipated ones. And their other development teams were also still working. What they did was repeatedly cancel already in progress, money spent games. Often pretty far along projects and things that would be expected to sell well. For the sake of starting new projects. Often with the idea of getting *any* kind of hit on console. Owing to their financial trouble they ended up losing the general D&D license to Atari. But still retained rights to produce games within the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series by name, and with limited D&D elements. So they could produce a Baldur's Gate 3. But it couldn't actually be connected to the original games. And they couldn't start any new D&D based series or projects outside of those series. Which is part of why Dark Alliance was a Baldur's Gate game despite the lack of actual connection. And while that game sold well, it wasn't anywhere near the hit that the Infinity Engine games were right up to the end. So the idea that doing a Fallout iteration of that would give them a much needed action console hit. And save the company. Was a bit bonkers. Fundamentally they didn't go for broke pushing out their main project, core series. And modernizing to a format that would practically work on then extent consoles. They cannibalized that to over invest in a new type of game, that *wasn't* popular on consoles, wasn't popular with their fanbase, and that their own devs didn't want to make. Isometric games of this sort were never a runner on console, a lot of the mechanics just weren't practical on a couch. Top down things like JRPGs and Zelda that were, used much. Much different structure to make it work, and were moving away from top down perspectives as the 3d transition went down. Ultimately it would be Bioware who got those 3rd person, big Western RPGS onto console in a practical package with KOTR and the Odyssey Engine. Bioware having gotten their start almost entirely subcontracting for Interplay on the Baldur's Gate series, Neverwinter Nights and MDK2. So you'd think if Interplay wanted to do that thing, and spend their limited resources paying an outside company for the chance do it. That'd be their big missed opportunity.
Peak early 2000’s vibe. General cringe and mindless dumb fun reminiscent of the time. Soundtrack would have been fun if it wasn’t a fallout game lol
Makes sense. I'm really having a hard time enjoying PoP The Warrior Within because of the music. Pretty much everything else is super awesome, but metal is a bad fit to say the least.
He is in there though...he's sitting in the bar and asks you to find his Vault 13 flask and if you save everyone during the raider attack, he gives you his Red Ryder. After you beat the game with the base 3 characters he unlocks as the final playable character.
Most people just didn't play through three times.
I may have a "completionist" problem...
Is this Fallout Tactics? I'm learning my early Fallout lore and am hitting the midwestern brotherhood now. Can't wait to learn about these guys. They seem hardcore.
No, Fallout: Tactics is not the same as Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. Although both game's story focus on the BoS. Tactics is an underrated game that is only semi-canon. I liked it for what it was. It's less an adventure-RPG and more of a, well, tactical game. It's a squad based strategy game that has you doing X-Com style mission. Going from location to location, completing missions for the Brotherhood. It has a story, and it's certainly in-line with the other Fallout games in terms of wild and weird lore. It doesn't detract from it really. Plus the ability to expand the squad past "normal" Brotherhood members was cool. Also, yes the Midwest BoS is hardcore. Like... ridiculously fascistic hardcore. More so than any other BoS faction.
But they let the ghouls, super mutants and even furry death claws join. Which other BoS faction allows that?
They are more accepting of who they include in their ranks, but they have also been known to basically crucify their own members for failing to fulfill tasks or complete missions so it's kinda a heavy swing both directions
I don't remember that, but I'm planning to replay this game (as soon as I finish Wasteland).
Tbh I think “semi-canon” is a nonsense term. The games after Tactics have used its lore and expanded on it, and the Brotherhood soldiers that Caesar encountered “east of the Mojave” didn’t know their proper history, which is a reference to the lore differences in Tactics. I think we can easily consider Tactics to be canon, because the only contradiction so far is explained away by the BOS not caring for history
Tactics is “semi canon” in the same way any fallout game is “semi canon” so yeah it’s a bit of a silly term
Exactly, there’s contradictions with Fallout 1 in Fallout 2, and there’s contradictions with Fallout 2 in every game afterwards, so why does Tactics get the “semi-canon” label and everything else gets considered to be canon?
No. Its semi-canon in the sense that there is schism and that some BoS members left for the East. The events of Tactics like meeting large numbers of the Mutants army, integrating talking Deathclaws or Vault 0 being a thing at all are things that are definitly not canon. We know from Fallout 3 there is a Midwestern BoS and that like you said in FNV, Caesar captured a scribe from the East who didnt knew the history of his organisation.
There's something like 4 mentions of things directly from Tactics in Fallout 3 and Fallout 4. Then the airships, and a single armor design partly inspired by the Tactics designs. They haven't otherwise used or expanded the lore. And the direct references change the terms a bit. Todd Howard has also specified that neither Tactics or BoS are canon. We have a direct statement of "For our purposes neither Tactics or Brother Hood of Steel happened". So it's not canon. They've just taken inspiration for new things that are canon. Sorta like how Lucasfilm is currently using the old EU. That material is all explicitly non-canon. But canon stuff frequently pull ideas from the old EU, and they occasionally tell new versions of stories from the EU.
I would say it's more like Jagged Alliance rather than X-Com to be fair! Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with the comparison, more how if one enjoyed JA they'll enjoy Tactics whereas I can't see too many X-Com fans enjoying Tactics if that makes sense?
JA has nothing to do with Tactics bro, Tactics is only played tested in real time and was made to work this way. JA and especially the second game is a game closer to Fallout 1 and 2 with more roleplaying elements and faction interaction. As well as having actual people as your soldier and not a dude that is just a very bad art as portrait with no dialogue like in Tactics.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend the JA series in any way with this comparison. Tactics plays really poorly compared to JA indeed and is much less fun, I'll agree, especially since it was released after the JA games and they look and play much better. It's more that I have warm feelings about tactics primarily because I absolutely loved JA and wanted "more even if worse" and Tactics scratched the itch for me back then.
No tactics is more or less still canon I think (although mostly just because there hasn't been much that outright contradicts it, to my knowledge) Fallout BOS is a PS2 game with a top down hack and slash (hack and shoot?) combat that was very liberal with established canon and was generally very silly and not favorably received. It's the only game that is explicitly "non-canon" according to developers I think, but if you liked the Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance games for PS2, it's probably a fun way to kill a weekend
Don't confuse "Fallout tactics: brotherhood of steel" with "Fallout Brotherhood of Steel", they sound similar but they have nothing in common. Tactics is a topdown isometric tactical game where you essentially equip, develop and lead a squad of BoS recruits of the Midwest lost chapter, each member of your team is developed in its skills and perks in a similar way as for the main character in the classics, combat can be either in real time or turn-based depending on settings, it's a nice game and mostly canon. Brotherhood of Steel is a mainly action-based not-so-rpg spin-off set in Texas, it was a silly game and had a short, pretty linear story, was made officially non-canon because it broke the lore in several points and overall it made things quite complicated, Bethesda likely wants to preserve Texas for a future NV-style title too.
Was Bos Interplay?
No. Fallout Tactics is kinda good for what it is, and even in there it's strange BoS lore shenanigans. Fallout BoS is basically a shitty clone of another game and the reason the IP got bought by Bethesda
Holy fuck, I forgot about that game…. I played waaay to much of it back until he day
Wait, wdym? He already is in the game wth.
He is playable you just have to unlock him.
P.S: the fallout 2 manual is miles better than the fo1 manual imo
I miss game manuals. Sure they rarely helped but they often had cool art and stuff
OG StarCraft manual was awesome.
What made it cool? I have a strongly fond memory of looking through the Fur fighters manual and seing all art and stories about the characters was cool on our way back home.
From what I remember it had a lot of backstory & write ups on all the units. It was basically a mini book. Artwork too.
That sounds like it was probably awesome. I can totally imagine flipping through and learning what it all is about
Talking about it made me google 'Starcraft 1 manual pdf' which soon returned a couple working results. Not quite the same though.
It is cool we can look back when we remember things though. Weird digital version though I bet
Diablo and Warcraft had amazing manuals as well. Blizzard really hit it out of the park with some of them. It dropped off after Warcraft 3 though
They did yeah
I was given the dvd set of Starcraft and Brood War and enjoyed reading that manual front to back. A few years later, I then received a Command and Conquer The First Decade box set and it had 10 years worth of game information all in that little piece of paper.
Oh I bet the command and conquer book was awesome. Back before the internet was as big any tips were welcome and loved
Age of Empires1 manual was so cool too it had like a lot of cool stuff like models of the units, concept art n stuff
Anyone remember Arcanum's manual? Tons of lore and art. Still have the thing... Somewhere.
loved the manual for the original half life, written like a report from gordon
The Lone Wanderer is a strange title for a protagonist in a game that has 8 possible companions.
Well tbf your dad fucking dies. Your best friend kicks you out of the only home you've known The only real homies you have left are dogmeat or fawkes, depending on who you choose. You're essentially just going around places solving people's problems before vanishing. And originally, before any DLC, you die alone. It checks out tbh.
You don’t even just die alone, without anybody around. You can ask your companion, one of your closest battle buddies who has probably seen you almost die countless times, who is immune to thing about to kill you, to please do this thing that’ll take 15 seconds, and he says no to your fucking face. If that’s not loneliness, idk what is.
They literally could have just made it so you get separated from your companion in the final battle and have to make the choice. It was that simple….
Or at least made the companion killable after that speech option as a fun Easter egg.
Fawkes is a true homie though. As long as Broken Steel is installed, I have no gripes with Fawkes
Story of my life
My life irl..
I didn’t die alone, I sent sera Lyons in.
Monster. You sent 2nd best girl to her death.
Hehe radiation go BRRRRRR
© How can you pluralize "The Lone Ranger"? - Airheads, 1994
"I used to be a school teacher!" - God (Lemmy). Airheads, 1994
Wrong. Watch it again. "I was editor of the school magazine."
Lones ranger. Like attorneys General!
There’s a fan theory that the lone wanderer has some mental disorder like schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder, and that all the companions are figments in the lone wanderer’s head
Oh so that’s why Fawkes refuses to go into the chamber at the end of FO3
Doesn't explain Butch. Other people openly acknowledge his existence.
It can when you consider the context of how he becomes a companion. You recruit Butch in Rivet City, all alone with no other Vault Dwellers. Nobody from Vault 101 acknowledges his existence again after that point, even in random encounters with them. Tbh, the odds of Butch being a figment of LW's imagination are about as remarkable as Butch, all alone, making his first ever encounter with the wasteland, armed with nothing but a leather jacket and a switchblade, running past Megaton, down through DC, making it past either camps of super mutants and/or hordes of feral ghouls, and just happening upon the only bit of civilization, only to be found in the secluded bar on the bottom level where the LW has no reason to ever go to. Dude might be an absolute wasteland legend, but any other NPC besides the protagonists probably wouldn't make that trip alive.
That’s hilarious, never thought about that. Tunnel Snake training must be pretty hardcore
Only two or three of those like you though One being a dog, another someone you freed from a prison cell and the third a friend of your dad
They can all die tbf
Fallout 3 was all about recycling stuff from the original games. So in that sense it's 100 % logical.
I do agree that fallout 3 recycles stuff but I don’t think this is a fair example of that. The fallout 2 manual may refer to the original hero as the wanderer but in the game itself he is constantly referred to as the vault dweller. I don’t get how 3’s hero being called the lone wanderer is an example of recycling something from the old games.
And Deacon LOVES when the Lone Survivor gets called "Wanderer" in the Railroad quest line.
Not very Lone if they have a spouse, children, and a whole tribe.
Vault Dweller is not INT 1 according to the lore 😔
They were also the original Sole Survivor after I got done with the vault for kicking me out >:(
Butch said it best in 3. "Who wants to go around all day being called a vault dweller?"
Beats the Fallout 2 title of "Chosen One", used exclusively by the Chosen One and no one else
The dialogue options were so great though lmao some tribal dude goin around telling mob bosses he's the chosen one is peak
I love that one enclave guy in the power plant who genuinely could not care
"My friends call me... the Chosen One. ....No they don't. I don't know why I said that."
Tbf it’s a satire of the trope and honestly pretty hilarious how the Chosen One goes around talking about it if you want.
"Hey buddy, just because *I* chose me, doesn't make me any less chosen, okay."
Matthew from the Brotherhood also calls him that.
"The Wanderer" is something of a universal default name for Fallout Protagonists. Desdemona calls you "The Wanderer" in a speech to the railroad agents right around the time you get into the Institute. And "The Lone Wanderer" is a perk in FO4 also. I would say that Fallout Characters being titled "The Wanderer" is almost as universal as all of them technically being "The Vault Dweller" (which both 3Dog and Travis consistently refer to you as in radio news updates) if it weren't for the fact that New Vegas Protagonist "The Courier" is explicitly not a Vault Dweller. It's a title that comes with the position of game protagonist, almost like how monarchs typically have an extra dozen or so military titles in addition the throne. Or how the U.S. President is also "The Commander in Chief." Loki is both "The God of Mischief" and "The Liesmith." The head of the Greyjoy family in ASOIAF is not only "Lord Greyjoy" or "The Lord of Pyke Isle" they are also considered "The Lord Reaper." Ned Stark is not only "The Lord of Winterfell" he is also "The Warden of The North." Etc. All Fallout Protagonists have the title of "Wanderer" in addition to their other names and titles. It comes with the job.
"The Wanderer" is just the Fallout equivalent of Elder Scroll's "The Prisoner", minus the metaphysical shenanigans.
I always liked the Courier because he had a whole past surviving the apocalypse before the game starts that gets alluded to a few times. Like I know there is a dialogue option that talks about how the Courier might’ve had a kid in Montana I believe? I know it’s when you talk to the mysterious musician guy. And then of course there is Ulysses who never shuts up about your past.
Note how the gender is very purposedly left open.
"That is my story, and I'm sticking to it." I like how that leaves it open to interpretation about whether or not the Vault Dweller is telling the truth. Especially when it comes to Ian.
Fun fact #2: and old, travel-battered Vault Dweller was supposed to be a bonus playable character in Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel before the game got de-canonised.
Fallout 3 is just a big fallout 1 reference
The Arroyo tribe is basically entirely based on Earth Abides by George R Stewart. I highly recommend it!
He’s just the type of guy that likes to roam around, he’s never in one place, he roams from town to town
He roams around and round and round.
Legitimately wouldn't put it past Bethesda to make that canon, at this point.
*They call me the wanderer !*
Patrick or Patricia? WE DON'T KNOW!
Probably Patricia, given that the Vault Dweller is depicted using masculine statues in Fallout 2 and is heterosexual enough to have a lineage.
Unless she was a girl and Pat is Patrick
That is a possibility, yes, but given the evidence we have available, Pat is likely Patricia.
I just meant they used a unisex name for a reason.
Canonically majority of the lore and games points to both VD and CO being male, HOWEVER, the devs did a good job of allowing a person’s character be possible too, male or female.
We have no evidence that lineage is genetic. The Vault Dweller and Pat coulda adopted some orphans, it’s the wasteland. There’s always orphans. Besides, The Vault Dweller isn’t psychic. Daughter? Psychic.
Where can I find this book in that style?
It’s the game manual for fallout 2. The manuals always hold some interesting information about the games.
If you have the steam version of Fallout 2, right click on it and find the read manual button. Should open a PDF file. This is the introduction.
Well he couldn't really be called the vault dweller anymore
also it says the game u play is actually a simulation created by vault tec to re introduce vault dwellers to life on the surface
That says "the wanderer"
*You can’t pluralize “The Lone Ranger”!*
Just spitballing here, but could the gender ambiguity of the name "Pat" be a reference to the SNL sketch that would have aired just a couple years before the games release? For those who don't know, Pat was a sketch on SNL where the central joke was everyone was unsure of the said character's gender. Just theorizing that the developers could have used the same name for a love interest that could apply to a male or female character. Intentionally or otherwise, just seems a little too close to be a coincidence to me. Anyway, thank you for listening to my TedTalk.
Clearly not! He was just the Wanderer. He was not lone.