#fallout 3 critical

[anneapocalypse]

I like your post about gray morality in video games! On the other hand I wanted to add that the gray decision-making you're talking about can have its own pitfalls (distinct from the pitfalls of centrist/apolitical "both sides are bad" apathy). I'm thinking of gritty action heroes who are presented as morally gray because they're pragmatic enough to torture and kill in the name of Truth, Justice, and the 'Murican Way, or just in the name of a macho revenge fantasy. To be clear, this isn't an indictment of gray morality, which I love when done well. Hell, the stories I'm complaining about tend not to be THAT gray in practice, as the bad guys are often SO exaggeratedly bad that there's not a real question of whether the hero is willing to Do What It Takes in the end. My point is more just that that's what people often mean when they condemn "gray morality."

Hi! Sorry this has been sitting my ask box for a while, I got busy and didn't want to just dash off a response.

(We're talking about this post, for those who haven't seen it. RIP my notifications.)

Anyway I'll just say here for the record that yeah, gray morality in fiction can be done poorly! While the line for "done poorly" is going to be different for everyone, I can certainly think of examples I've disliked.

(This got long, sorry in advance. 😩 Also, spoilers for Fallout 3 and all the Dragon Age games, if anyone cares!)

My go-to example of one I think is a real stinker is the Fallout 3 DLC "The Pitt" where the critical decision is... whether to free a bunch of people from being enslaved in horrible conditions! But! in order to free them, you have to kidnap a baby from... the enslaver. Because something something the baby's genetics are the key to curing the illness that afflict the slaves from their horrible working conditions... you don't actually have to hurt the baby, though, she'll be fine. She'll just be taken away from her parents. Who are, again, slavers. I promise I'm not making it sound any stupider than it sounds in the game itself. :P Like the whole concept of putting an infant in your video game inventory and making a break for it is just a little too wacky for me to take seriously, but it feels like you're meant to take it seriously, and apart from trying to inject some ambiguity into the decision, I'm not sure why the whole baby plot would even be there. Honestly, Fallout 3 isn't a game about moral ambiguity. (I think both New Vegas and even Fallout 4 do that kind of thing better.) Most of its major decisions boil down to "Do you want to do the Good Person Thing or the Evil Bastard thing?" That's the game. No one is trying to inject moral ambiguity into blowing up Megaton. It's just a thing you can do if you want to roleplay an Evil Character. I love Fallout 3, I'm just saying, that's what it is. And I think "The Pitt" would have been both more thematically appropriate and less stupid if it had just skipped the whole baby plot and been like "Hey! Do you want to be the Good Person who frees the slaves, or the Evil Bastard who allies with the slaver?" It's morally simple, but the thing is the baby didn't actually make that story or the decision any more interesting to me, so it might as well not have been there at all.

But Fallout 3 isn't the kind of thing I was thinking of when I made that post. I was thinking a lot more about things like the decisions in the Dragon Age games, which don't usually fall neatly into The Good Option and The Evil Option, and are more likely to ask the player to make their own judgments. And a common criticism I see of those games is that they're "centrist" and try to "both sides" in-universe issues because the game doesn't explicitly tell you which choice is The Good One, or it doesn't explicitly reward one choice and punish the other, and that's... not really an interpretation that I generally agree with? But that's a much more involved discussion, honestly. At some point, I'd like to write a post about how I feel Inquisition presents the mage rebellion, because it's such a big topic and big game (and by "I'd like to" I mean... I already have a draft started, whoops). That's just more than I have time to get into today!

But I will say this: I find the plot decisions where you're given an obvious "best option" to be the least interesting choices in the Dragon Age games. The Redcliffe decision in Origins is the most obvious one to me, where I think the option to save Connor from possession should at least have been much harder to find, because in the lore, the fact that mages even can be saved from possession and not just killed is widely unknown because it goes against the templar party line, and the fact that Ferelden's First Enchanter is just like, "Oh yeah, sure, we can totally do that, pack up the lyrium boys" just doesn't really mesh with everything else we're told about the Circles and conventional wisdom on magic. Plus, the fact that there's no consequences for leaving Redcliffe for days with Connor possessed just... makes the decision too easy, for me, because in-universe it feels like it shouldn't be that easy. There's also the werewolf decision, wherein the Lady of the Forest just tells you straight out that Zathrian can break the curse with his own death, presenting you with a "best option" that it feels both stupid and sort of comically evil to disregard (like, from a purely pragmatic standpoint why would you fight the entire pack of werewolves or an entire clan of elves when you can just make Zathrian solve the problem here and now).

The ending decision of DA2 is an example that I feel has a really stark moral contrast to it (which I've discussed before), and one that I think does place certain constraints on role-playing, but in that case I think it's appropriate to the themes of the game, so I don't mind it.

But my favorite plot decisions in Dragon Age are things like the Landsmeet, the Winter Palace, and even the Orzammar quest line. Not just because I love fantasy politics, but because you have to work with what you're given in a way that feels realistic to the setting and the story. No matter how much of a hero you are, you can't waltz into Orzammar or Denerim or Halamshiral and brute-force a perfect solution. Unless you're a dwarf yourself, you're an outsider who doesn't know anything about dwarven politics and no one is particularly forthcoming about the situation because everyone has an agenda! and yet you have to solve this conflict in order to get aid against the Blight. You have to make a decision based on very little information and almost none of it concrete. At the Landsmeet, you may want justice, but it's your word against Loghain's with no proof of what really happened at Ostagar, and if you want to win you need provable charges, you need to show the nobles that you support their interests and not just your own, and no matter which butt you put on the throne, you're faced with the very real possibility of another succession crisis a few decades on so congratulations, you've just kicked the can down the road.

And oh, the Winter Palace, my beloved. You cannot make Briala the Empress, no matter how much you might want to! You cannot abolish the monarchy. You cannot force Orlais to relinquish the Dales and re-establish the Elven state. Your options are: keep the empress whose reign overall has been sympathetic to elves and commoners and relatively diplomatic toward her neighbors, but who also may have just done a good old fashioned massacre to crush a rebellion and maintain her power; let her be killed and put the militant expansionist on the throne; get Briala and Celene back together (maybe with the hope that Briala will continue to influence her); help Briala do a blackmail which surely will work out totally fine and not backfire in anyway; or force them all to shut up and play ball for now, basically just kicking the can down the road. None of these options are perfect by any means! There are interesting and believable in-character reasons you might choose to role-play any of them. And every one has the possibility of unforeseen consequences later on, positive or negative.

I made the original post, in part, in response to condemnations of the kind of decisions I enjoy in these games. And at the end of the day, it's okay not to like those decisions, to prefer more unambiguous choices or more room to indulge in the fantasy of fixing everything. But that's not always the kind of story a game is trying to tell, and I think that's fine, and personally I enjoy the complicated decisions more. And I feel like sometimes those complicated or ambiguous choices are read as if they're either presenting all options as morally equivalent when they're not, or that they're "punishing" the player for a choice if it has any kind of negative outcome, and I don't think that's the case! I think it's fine and good in fiction to explore the ways in which trying to change things for the better can be difficult and how a choice with some negative consequences may still be the best one available, and so on and so forth.

Anyway, I hope I didn't get too far afield here, and thanks if you read this far!

[psykersomatic]

[copdog1234]

I think some Fandoms kinda have a bias against black and brown characters unfortunately, it’s disappointing. There always seems to be less attention paid to the black and brown characters

Yeah... I know that's exactly the reason why, even if some are unaware of it themselves. I mean, I've seen how people in the bg3 fandom treat Wyll. But both him and my boy Maximus deserve all the love, damn it!

[teddybasmanov]

Since Hbomberguy's recent popularity surge I decided to watch some of his videos that I haven't yet (I mostly watched his political stuff, for some reason) and I while I did have a lot of fun with Pathologic (though while knowing about its origins and setting I was still jump-scared by him calling the in-game currency rubles), I still cannot bring myself to watch his Fallout 3 and Skyrim videos, because I feel like he'll come to my apartment and personally take away the CDs that have been there for fifteen and twelve years respectively...

[ruleofstars]

YOU’VE BEEN HIT BY

YOU’VE BEEN STRUCK BY

A HYPERFIXATION!!!

[rinwellisathing]

Cishet women in fandoms with character creation, every time. And yes, they're including gay characters in that, you saw what they did to Dorian Pavus. I know this is mean, but I'm just....y'all...I'm just so done with the oversaturation.

[stcrforged]

NEVER regret thy fall, o icarus of the fearless flight, for the greatest tragedy of them all, is never to feel the burning light ─── oscar wilde INDEPENDENT and PRIVATE multimuse of various fandoms such as fallout, x-men, god of war, baldur's gate, one piece, percy jackson, and more! written by kristina.

[kindlythevoid]

Listen, Ethan Hunt is at his core a silly goofy guy. Can he improvise? Sure! Guy loves to do it, does it all the time in fact, favorite way to do things. Anything that requires an actual thought?? A single thought spanning more than the next hour?? Nothing. Not a single braincell of his is working. This man hopped into the helicopter knowing nothing other than the fact that it was constantly yelling at him and that was a Bad Thing. Why? He doesn’t know. Listen. Listen. The man is smart; we all saw him do physics in the third movie when he pendulumed across a building. But also?? This man gets by with the Bare Minimum amount of Critical Thinking Skills (tm). The amount of times (at least two) he has gotten through a mission hoping the targets had never seen each other before?? Jumping into/through/generally towards something with the wish that he makes it and then doesn’t!?! I love Ethan, but it is because the only two thoughts going through that man’s head is Love Friends/People and Jump/Climb Things.

[bellonathedragonborn]

You know after learning about Fallout 1 and 2 and watching videos on them. I can understand now why people make videos talking about how Bethesda doesn’t understand Fallout. Like it’s more than 1950’s aesthetic (which is actually retro futurism poorly understood by Bethesda) and the vault boy. It’s supposed to be a dark and withered world.

That and unlike Bethesda’s Fallout the original studios that worked on 1 and 2 actually put better thought into their lore and world building. Things make sense in those games unlike in Fallout 3 and 4. It also explains why people flock more towards New Vegas.

[jaalamadarav]

felt the need to introduce my little guys here 🫶 soooooo we got:

duke shepard (paragade. renegon. guy who's got ptsd but trying despite. earth-born + sole survivor. played him very much as a hardass with a warm center for specifically his team) who romanced a different character each game and did the synthesis ending even though i wanted to do control so badly. kaidan was always endgame and i could never get good screenshots of him because the lighting in this fucking game kills me. included my favorite citadel dlc quote

lark shepard (my immediate replaying of me1 once i finished me3... shes leaning much more paragon but still relatively renegade also. playing her more as a "by the book" kind of leader but she's also occasionally Scary<3 shes still in me1... garrus is endgame because i romanced liara/tali/kaidan with duke. shes a spacer + war hero.)

and then my ryder :) still just scott because i love when characters call your PC by their first name. look at him. he looks like a scott. frat boy with fuckass facial hair. im sooo attached to him unfortunately. guy in a tanktop + headphones and joggers that are hot pink. he looks like he just got back from the gym in most cutscenes where hes not wearing armor. i play him like he didnt take this stuff as seriously as his sister because he always figured she was the obvious choice for any leadership role and their rivalry was mostly just for fun. hes casual/impulsive/emotional. he kinda sucks. he cares a lot but hes also a little careless. hes trying to be a good leader by what he thinks his family would want him to be. literal wakeup call and all that

[red-nightskies]

Hello Friends!

I am doing a 20% sale on semi-realistic half body commissions for the remainder of March cause I just want to do some more of these cause... I like doing them, what can I say uwu

The Info:

To receive a commission please send a requests on here via messages

Please send any references of poses/face claims/ anything you might think will be useful for me to work off of. 

Payment via PayPal only and in GBP (£)

Payment when sketch is approved

I will send you a sketch before I start colouring to be approved and so you can make any changes.

I will send you the final commission via email in PNG format.

Turnaround time will vary. It can take up to a week or a month depending on how busy I am, but feel free to ask for updates.

Will Draw:

Any character from any fandom/d&d  

OC’s. Again, Any fandom is fine just please provide character descriptions/ face claims/reference images if possible

Nudity/Mild NSFW 

Blood/Gore

Won’t Draw:

Anything Offensive (the usual stuff)

[locketslonging]

And it was written

I got cursed like Eve got bitten

Oh, was it punishment?

A STUDY IN: when is a door not a door?, clawing for your independence, familial responsibility, supernatural themes, unlikely friendships, found and fought for family, when do they end and i begin?, rediscovering self worth, chasing your happiness in whatever form it comes.

independent && selective fandomless modern fantasy original character. 21+ carrd.

graphics by @stilettobite

[nochiquinn]

$5 FLASH COMMISSIONS

YOU GIVE ME: $5 USD

YOU RECEIVE: Your choice of:

500 words of writing (ex)

10 icons (ex)

1 gifset (max 4 gifs) (ex)

GUIDELINES:

WRITING:

any rating, any pairing

OCs welcome

reserve the right to "hard no" any request

ICONS & GIFS:

any size (50x50, 200x200, whatever you need)

any subject (animation/live action/video games/celebrities all fine)

for purposes of quick turnaround, must have easily accessible, decent-quality sources (youtube counts if at least 720p (icons) or 1080p (gifs))

if a large source (ie long-running series, any critical role episode), must have specific episodes, time stamps, or stills already available

does not have to be a fandom I'm in, if you can give me specifics on what you want

no fanart, unless it's provably your own work

reserve the right to "hard no" any request

10 slots currently open. turnaround within a week. drop me an ask or a message and we can get started!!

tagging fandoms I'm active in but this is by no means an exhaustive list, feel free to make a request

[copdog1234]

Imma be honest, as someone who was trying to give Starfield a fair shot, who was cautiously excited to see Bethesda return to form, who enjoys Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76 despite their flaws for their easy-going and relaxing nature, and is nostalgic for the first 3 mentioned because they cultivated my love for open world rpgs in the first place,

Starfield is extremely boring.

Part of that may be my typical disinterest for space settings (with two exceptions, really). Or maybe my taste in games has matured over the years and I just need rpgs that have more pizazz to hold my interest.

Or perhaps it's the fact that I'm only 3 hours into a game that takes on average 10 hours to get good according to most players (from what I've heard). But I gotta say. That's a ridiculous amount of time to invest into a game to wait to actually enjoy it. Bethesda never had a problem with keeping me interested before. The intros to their games are typically very good -iconic, even, so why does Starfield drag on and on without rhyme or reason???

I'm honestly baffled about it. I'm disappointed. It was going to be my game to take break from BG3 with. To be able to lie back on my couch and play. And it just

Makes me wanna replay older Bethesda games instead.

[arsene-ee]

unpopular opinion but I love Fallout 3 so much more than New Vegas, because, first of all, it doesn't crash like every 5 seconds, but there's also so much emotional value in Fallout 3. James is such a dad, i love him so much, whenever I feel sad I play the beginning all over again.

[rad-roche]

fallout brotherhood of steel for the smash hit ps2 console has, again, crashed in some mysterious way and cost me an hour of progress. a normal human being, confronted with this terrible game routinely langolier-ing itself on a hard drive full of good retro games, would call it there. the first time, i should have. unfortunately, it's now personal. i have to see it through. if i don't come out of the other end of this with a lucrative bawlz sponsorship i'll be the kind of mad they don't make words for