Post by bear on Oct 20, 2015 11:49:33 GMT
So we talk a lot about Fallout 3 in the OOC room and how fuckstupid the story was. Despite that, though, I still enjoy the game from time to time (mostly because it crashes about a hundredth as often as New Vegas does and the loading screens don't last five for-fuck's-sake minutes.) So here's the headcanon I use to make myself able to play it despite the story. I basically just ignore stuff that contradicts it, just pretending my character said what I actually wanted him to say instead of the bland and boring dialogue choices.
Before I start my list, let me just say that with all open-world games I assume the game world is much, much bigger than it actually appears in game, and that towns like Megaton are actual TOWNS rather than three buildings and a bar stacked within ten feet of each other. So without further ado, here is my bulleted list of ways I pretend the Fallout 3 story is better than it actually is:
General Setting
First off, the whole "Wasteland needs water" thing needs some SERIOUS overhauling to be anything but idiotic. Instead, what I like to pretend is that the groundwater in DC was contaminated with an extremely nasty biological warfare pathogen that is constantly mutating and sustaining itself over the years. Each time people begin to develop immunity, it comes up with a new strain, and in the last 30 years, it's gotten so bad that it's in serious danger of wiping the wasteland out. Project Purity isn't just a giant water purifier. It's specifically made to be able to filter out this virus and weaken it, cleaning water for drinking AND giving an opportunity to make a vaccine at the same time.
Megaton
I like to pretend that Megaton is a place that actually produces things. They have a water purifier, so let's pretend that they have some other prewar tech as well, such as food processors and stills. Basically, they are able to create food and water that, while not quite clean and disease-free, is far better than the vast majority of what you can find in the rest of the wastelands. Most of Megaton's population make their living as wasteland hunter-gatherers, going out on long missions to find raw materials to bring back for their pre-war supertech to process into something you can eat without dying. This makes them a threat to. . .
Tenpenny Towers
These guys fill the "rich, elitist, racist asshole" slot in the character line up. Problem is, how do they make all that money? Well, what I like to pretend is that they produce food as well. South of the tower, in one of those places where you just can't go, there's a patch of heavily defended fertile ground where they can grow food that's actually clean. They make their money by using slaves from Paradise Falls to till these fields, and then selling the food at punishingly high prices to the rest of the wasteland. Tenpenny wants Megaton removed because they represent a threat to his monopoly on edible goods.
The Enclave
The reason the Enclave is here is because they have files detailing a lot of experimental pre-war tech that exists in fortified bunkers under DC. If they could find this tech, it would give them almost unlimited production ability and let them go back and take down the people in California who ousted them once before. However, they are not immune to the water-born bioweapon that infests DC. In fact, they're MORE susceptible to it because they haven't been living in the area getting immunized. Thus, they want to take over Project Purity so that they can create a sustainable vaccine, and then they want to either destroy it or use it to control who gets to live and who gets to die, making the entire capital wasteland into their pawns. Dad found out about this somehow (It's really not important how. Maybe he was captured by the Enclave and managed to escape and hack one of their computers or something) and that's why he's willing to kill himself to keep them from getting it. Note that when he blows up the purifier console, he doesn't actually destroy the purifier. He just does some damage to the control room.
Three Dog
Rather than "fighting the good fight" and being some kind of wasteland messiah, Three Dog is nothing more than a kook with a radio. The Brotherhood of Steel doesn't protect him, they occupy the building he's in because of it's power generating and defensive capabilities, and they just decided that he's harmless enough so there's no reason to kill him. The quest to get Galaxy News Radio back online was actually a quest to help restore easy Brotherhood communications, and Three Dog just thought it was all about him.
So there you have it. This doesn't fix every issue (some things like Little Lamplight straight up can't be fixed) but it handwaves enough things to make the main plot simply a bit boring and by-the-numbers rather than brainscrewingly stupid. Let's all pretend that's how it was so that we can let Fallout 3 be canon in our world without hating ourselves.
Before I start my list, let me just say that with all open-world games I assume the game world is much, much bigger than it actually appears in game, and that towns like Megaton are actual TOWNS rather than three buildings and a bar stacked within ten feet of each other. So without further ado, here is my bulleted list of ways I pretend the Fallout 3 story is better than it actually is:
General Setting
First off, the whole "Wasteland needs water" thing needs some SERIOUS overhauling to be anything but idiotic. Instead, what I like to pretend is that the groundwater in DC was contaminated with an extremely nasty biological warfare pathogen that is constantly mutating and sustaining itself over the years. Each time people begin to develop immunity, it comes up with a new strain, and in the last 30 years, it's gotten so bad that it's in serious danger of wiping the wasteland out. Project Purity isn't just a giant water purifier. It's specifically made to be able to filter out this virus and weaken it, cleaning water for drinking AND giving an opportunity to make a vaccine at the same time.
Megaton
I like to pretend that Megaton is a place that actually produces things. They have a water purifier, so let's pretend that they have some other prewar tech as well, such as food processors and stills. Basically, they are able to create food and water that, while not quite clean and disease-free, is far better than the vast majority of what you can find in the rest of the wastelands. Most of Megaton's population make their living as wasteland hunter-gatherers, going out on long missions to find raw materials to bring back for their pre-war supertech to process into something you can eat without dying. This makes them a threat to. . .
Tenpenny Towers
These guys fill the "rich, elitist, racist asshole" slot in the character line up. Problem is, how do they make all that money? Well, what I like to pretend is that they produce food as well. South of the tower, in one of those places where you just can't go, there's a patch of heavily defended fertile ground where they can grow food that's actually clean. They make their money by using slaves from Paradise Falls to till these fields, and then selling the food at punishingly high prices to the rest of the wasteland. Tenpenny wants Megaton removed because they represent a threat to his monopoly on edible goods.
The Enclave
The reason the Enclave is here is because they have files detailing a lot of experimental pre-war tech that exists in fortified bunkers under DC. If they could find this tech, it would give them almost unlimited production ability and let them go back and take down the people in California who ousted them once before. However, they are not immune to the water-born bioweapon that infests DC. In fact, they're MORE susceptible to it because they haven't been living in the area getting immunized. Thus, they want to take over Project Purity so that they can create a sustainable vaccine, and then they want to either destroy it or use it to control who gets to live and who gets to die, making the entire capital wasteland into their pawns. Dad found out about this somehow (It's really not important how. Maybe he was captured by the Enclave and managed to escape and hack one of their computers or something) and that's why he's willing to kill himself to keep them from getting it. Note that when he blows up the purifier console, he doesn't actually destroy the purifier. He just does some damage to the control room.
Three Dog
Rather than "fighting the good fight" and being some kind of wasteland messiah, Three Dog is nothing more than a kook with a radio. The Brotherhood of Steel doesn't protect him, they occupy the building he's in because of it's power generating and defensive capabilities, and they just decided that he's harmless enough so there's no reason to kill him. The quest to get Galaxy News Radio back online was actually a quest to help restore easy Brotherhood communications, and Three Dog just thought it was all about him.
So there you have it. This doesn't fix every issue (some things like Little Lamplight straight up can't be fixed) but it handwaves enough things to make the main plot simply a bit boring and by-the-numbers rather than brainscrewingly stupid. Let's all pretend that's how it was so that we can let Fallout 3 be canon in our world without hating ourselves.