fallout as a whole and immersion

[DoctaSax]

I meant: commie-hating robot shooting lasers from his eyes makes perfect sense.

[Veta]

My favorite moment from fallout 3 was getting out of the vault , being in a strange new world ,walking into a school full of raiders ,it just felt so real , so when I saw bethesda tried to quickly finish the game using prime it just felt too much out of place .

[KainsChylde]

The theme of Fallout is 50s forever. 50s military principle was "bigger is better". Take a car, upgrade to a tank. Take a regular aircraft, upgrade it to a super-fortress. So why not take a civilian-level automaton like the Protectrons and upgrade to Liberty Prime. Its just a continuation of a prevailing concept.

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

Fallout has never been immersive.

[ChancellorKremlin]

Fallout has never been immersive.

 

Speak for yourself.

[sammythesquirrel]

A lot of the complaints about "immersion" that I'm seeing are founded in the realism of our world and not the fallout world.

 

I guess my point is' date=' if something is damaging your immersion, decide whether it offends you because it violates our reality or the reality of the fallout world. If it always seems to be our reality that's getting violated and bothering you, then perhaps fantasy games aren't for you.

[/quote']

 

 

Where do you draw the line between the games reality and our reality?

Saying you don't need to know where food production takes place or how people support themselves because "it's not part of the games reality", especially since a single line of text saying door to (insert necessary facility name) or a couple lines of dialogue even if generic would serve as an explanation for stuff, just strikes me as dumb.

 

Several people have stated, and rightfully so, that making a full size vault would be far too costly difficult and time consuming and I agree but all the devs would have to do to keep that sense of realism is label all those locked and inaccessible doors.

Little things like that would take 2 secs to change or add , and in so doing add an element of realism and therefore impressiveness that is a cut above more or less any other rpg in existence imo anyway

[BruceWayne]

I think that the main immersion problem with games like Fallout/TES lies within the time one plays them. The longer you play a certain game, the more you notice.

After 100+ hours of gameplay the immersion breakers and big/little errors become more apparent. People like to focus their criticism on their second, third, fourth playthrough and like to forget that they had great entertainment value on the same game before.

 

I can tell you a lot of things that are wrong with Fallout, that don't make sense in the real world and that don't really make sense in the Fallout world, but that doesn't take away from the time I was immersed and entertained the first or second time around.

[DeadSomething]

you're right, that it wasnt imemrsion breakign in the first few playthroughs. but just for example: tes3 morrowind had much more immersion than tes4 oblivion.

like in movies (no matter what genre) , i want games to not have big holes in the logic of how that world works. when something thats deviating from our worlds reality is happening, i want it to be explained ingame no matter if short or in a long sequence or book and it must not break any laws of logic of that world that have been brought to the player before.

 

example stimpacks: such thing doesnt exist in our world, but the game explains that those things have been invented before the war. someone could have explained how they work exactly, but thats not necessary, because you can imagine either nanites or stemcells or whatever hormone that stimulates the body to repair itself. after all its SciFi.

 

but there are things in the game that wouldnt be logical in our world and also wouldnt be in the fallout universe, just because they have either never been explained as being different there, or they have explicitly been explained to be exactly as in our world, and they just ignore that law.

 

example economy: in our world, food has to be produced on fields or by animal farms, the people in the wasteland say the same about their own world, still i can remember onlyfew places that produce their own food by livestock (canterbury commons, republic of dave, arefu) or farms (hydroponic plant in rivet city) and random hunters around the wasteland. but every merchant has food en masse for everyone.

 

i hope you dont misunderstand me here. because i really love the game and wont let those things keep me from playing it. but if there's the chance to fill those immersionbreaking holes, i'm always glad to take whatever mod that makes the game better.

[astymma]

you're right' date=' that it wasnt imemrsion breakign in the first few playthroughs. but just for example: tes3 morrowind had much more immersion than tes4 oblivion.

like in movies (no matter what genre) , i want games to not have big holes in the logic of how that world works. when something thats deviating from our worlds reality is happening, i want it to be explained ingame no matter if short or in a long sequence or book and it must not break any laws of logic of that world that have been brought to the player before.

 

example stimpacks: such thing doesnt exist in our world, but the game explains that those things have been invented before the war. someone could have explained how they work exactly, but thats not necessary, because you can imagine either nanites or stemcells or whatever hormone that stimulates the body to repair itself. after all its SciFi.

 

but there are things in the game that wouldnt be logical in our world and also wouldnt be in the fallout universe, just because they have either never been explained as being different there, or they have explicitly been explained to be exactly as in our world, and they just ignore that law.

 

example economy: in our world, food has to be produced on fields or by animal farms, the people in the wasteland say the same about their own world, still i can remember onlyfew places that produce their own food by livestock (canterbury commons, republic of dave, arefu) or farms (hydroponic plant in rivet city) and random hunters around the wasteland. but every merchant has food en masse for everyone.

 

i hope you dont misunderstand me here. because i really love the game and wont let those things keep me from playing it. but if there's the chance to fill those immersionbreaking holes, i'm always glad to take whatever mod that makes the game better.

[/quote']

 

A lot of the "world" that makes things like the economy possible is simply not shown in the game. In New Vegas, the NCR has Brahmin Barons wielding great political power. Heck Gunderson is one of them and the Phebus couple are also Brahmin ranchers. In FO3, it can probably be assumed that such ranchers/farmers exist near to Washington, DC but maybe not in the immediate area.

 

Beth, due to whatever reasons at the time... usually monetary or time being tight, do a lot of "existence by inference". As an example, the existence of a slave trading network can be inferred by the existence of Paradise Falls. The existence of trading caravans and merchants and food producers can all be inferred by the availability of goods. TBH, I don't blame Beth for leaving a lot of these details to modders. After all, it costs money to make the content and affects performance to include it. A certain amount of "taking things for granted" has to be expected... we have to just infer that something exists because the results of it existing are evident. Can that affect immersion? Absolutely. Should it? Perhaps... perhaps not. Up to modders to rectify the situation if it does affect your immersion.

[DoctaSax]

Immersion doesn't mean that everything should be realistic and completely as it would be in reality. Just that there is enough for your own imagination to fill in the blanks, if it is willing to do so. That's called suspension of disbelief. You have to be willing to go along with what you're presented. For some reason, people seem to have more problems with this in the fallout world than they do in the TES world, which has magic, orcs and elves. Go figure.

 

When it comes to the developers leaving a few things out, well they can't please everybody and still release a game every now and then. I don't advocate a mindless acceptance of everything that's presented to you, but sometimes I think the main bulk of criticism directed at beth rpg's is due to people just loving to criticize, and/or warped expectations that no game studio could possibly fulfill at this point in time.

[KainsChylde]

Immersion doesn't mean that everything should be realistic and completely as it would be in reality. Just that there is enough for your own imagination to fill in the blanks' date=' if it is willing to do so. That's called suspension of disbelief. You have to be willing to go along with what you're presented. For some reason, people seem to have more problems with this in the fallout world than they do in the TES world, which has magic, orcs and elves. Go figure.

[/quote']

 

I think the issue here is that in TES, the fantasy is obvious. There are, as you said, fantasy creatures like dragons and orcs and such, there's magic, etc. These things empower our suspension of disbelief because we're starting from a fantasy standpoint.

 

In Fallout, we're starting from a semi-reality standpoint. It's on Earth, you're only option for a player character is a human, your weapons are real-world (or at least semi-plausible) weapons. These things make suspension of disbelief harder.

[Marchiavel]

Even if I understand the playability prerogative, almost everything can be explained, but two points :

 

- first, the economy : extraction, crafting, selling, using, recycling, that's the objects lifecycle. Event in the 50s, or in far-west (as it seems that FONV is western-inspired), there were farmers, and smiths.

 

- second, the choice : the universe is supposed to be free, but there is barriers everwhere, in moutains, in vaults, and even in dialogs.

 

That's what I find immersion-breaking. And that's the reason why I love mods

[Handsome Squidward]

Fallout 3 would be a fantastic and  immersible  game if it had the survival aspect (, mechanics, ironsights . . .) Fallout NV implemented. Having only irradiated water to drink for most of Fallout 3's campaign is an incredible experience. Sorry for the advocation, but the taleoftwowastelands mod 2.0 is soon being released and I highly recommend it. Combining the wastelands is enjoyable, but retaining Fallout NV's  mechanics  brings out the true harshness of the wasteland that everyone desires. Fallout 3 had such an excellent story and environment, but its lack of immersion and the essence of surviving was a real shame.

 

I believe everyone can agree that mods are essential in making these games immersible (and sexy).

[TheoryoftheDead]

I don't find it any more difficult to believe than TES for instance with all it's magic and demons.

 

 

This. When I'm playing a game, I'm not looking for realism - in fact, I try to avoid it, and I just tend to go with whatever is going on. I've got no problem with immersing myself in pretty much any game - least of all the fallout franchise.

[ElvenScoundrel]

FNV had enough immersion for me to be satisfied. You see people farming, tending to Brahmin or Bighorners, you see mines, you see the Gunrunners and their workshop, you see prostitutes laboring, the NCR patrolling, etc. It felt pretty alive, if a bit devoid of life at places, which is understandable from a performance perspective.

 

FO3? No farms, Brahmin barely seen, people living in shitty scrap metal shacks when there's concrete jungles elsewhere... it's just kinda hard to sink yourself in this game when it's half-assed in many places.

[Handsome Squidward]

I just want to go back to DC with all my new guns from New Vegas. There is not a lot to kill in vanilla New Vegas without wiping out factions.

[ElvenScoundrel]

I just want to go back to DC with all my new guns from New Vegas. There is not a lot to kill in vanilla New Vegas without wiping out factions.

 

There's a shitton of Legion and Fiends to kill.