[Blood-Pigggy]

Originally Posted by red_avatar

Ah but you COULD still talk to him and ask him and he gave his explanation. Your father had just died and it was obvious that your character wanted to die for your father's project as well rather than risk someone else. It's also mentioned that the radiation is extremely high - most likely higher than what Super Mutants can withstand (you speak of realism of radiation but heavy radiation incinerates particles so no living organism could withstand it).

Supermutants are ENTIRELY immune to radiation, this is an effect of the FEV which neutralizes deadly contaminants within the body, repairs cells, and replenishes them upon death. A Supermutant wouldn't suffer any cancerous growths with high radiation dosage because the DNA that's altered by radiation in order to cause the spastic growth would immediately be repaired by the FEV which "fixes" damaged or irregular cells. This is why Supermutants are sterile, because the gametes of reproductive cells are only "half cells" which FEV "fixes".

If radiation kills the cell, then FEV simply rejuvenates it, however, this is probably not the case as the Supermutants are simply immune to radiation because of FEV.

This is all within the Fallout universe, where steady dosage of radiation transforms human beings into Ghouls and other creatures into massive or altered forms of their original selves, hence radscorpions, mantis, and giant ants.
This is also a good time to mention that Fallout 3 breaks canon with Moira when she becomes a Ghoul, normals become Ghouls after an extended period of time while exposed to low to mid-levels of radiation. Moira becomes a Ghoul when a nuclear bomb explodes while she's in the nearby vicinity, not only would this kill her (Fallout canon or not), but she would just get radiation sickness and die according to Fallout's traditional treatment of radiation, this is why your character in Fallout 1 dies from radiation poisoning in the Glow if he isn't properly prepared, or why in general radiation simply damages your stats and kills you, Ghouls are formed by very long extended periods of radiation exposure, not simply application of massive dosage.

What's even worse is that Colonel Autumn survives the radiation when your father activates the Project. Naturally, you can see him inject something into himself when it happens, probably Rad-X or Rad-Away, but how does this explain your death even when you're hopped up on a ridiculous amount of Rad-X? Bethesda attempts to form shortcuts in the plot then completely ignore any concessions they have made towards future plot devices, which creates plot holes.
I can't imagine that you'd consider Fawkes' excuse to be anything other than heinously stupid, "It's your destiny". What is that? Obviously it isn't since you can send Sarah Lyons into the chamber, or several of the other NPC companions (except for Charon of course, who is, once again, immune to radiation), yet Fawkes spouts some poorly written nonsense?

It's a cop out, a really bad one too, also your argument makes no sense. Bethesda shouldn't tell you your character's motivations, you should do so, if they want people to honestly believe that you are truly the character within the game, then his motivation and decisions should be left to himself, not what the game decides it should be. I don't care for RPGs that try to make you the character, I honestly prefer the detachment you carry in most RPGs, it simply serves the ruleset and ideals carried with RPGs better, but if Bethesda wishes to create a player defined RPG, then they should leave decisions and intentions to the player, which goes along with what I said regarding the shoddy Karma design in an earlier post.

Originally Posted by red_avatar

I've heard this argument many times and while you do have a point, it's still a rather weak one. For starters, many craters DO have radiation. But let's take a look at more realistic radiation.

STALKER is probably the only other game that has radiation as invisible nemesis and while I loved the game, I do see that the brain scorcher zone was too much trial and error. Stepping two feet ahead would see you suddenly bathing in heavy radiation which is realistic but it means having to quickload unless you want to run out of anti-rad in no time.

Real radiation is quite different from what you may believe. While craters would most likely have a bigger amount of radiation, you need to take into account that metal absorbs radiation and holds it for a very long time. Basically, just about every metal item in Fallout 3 would be heavily radioactive. And guess what: there's TONS of the stuff. Imagine receiving a constant dose just by wearing armour and a weapon. It wouldn't make for a nice game. That's why, for example, you're not allowed to wear any jewellery when you visit Chernobyl and Pypriat (something which I plan to do this fall).

Fallout 3 is still a game after all and realism has its limited when you want to keep it fun. STALKER was a far more tense game - a gritty dark and realistic game in many ways - but Fallout 3 is a lot lighter. It wouldn't have fit the game. Don't forget FO1&2 didn't have high radiation sources either.

I've already said that the Fallout series has its own definition of radiation, it's not even to bar realism or to improve gameplay, radiation in Fallout is based on the general concept of radiation to the average uninformed human being in the 50's, an anomalous, mysterious, and dangerous thing. As such, the radiation in Fallout follows the typical 50's stereotypes, enlarged monstrosities, humans with their flesh melted off that now bask in radiation, a post-apocalyptic future brought on by the use of nuclear weaponry and so on.

Originally Posted by red_avatar

Bethesda simply keeps it a streamlined game. The result is that the mod community has an incredible amount of room to play and I'm convinced that this is part of Bethesda's strategy. Oblivion was a LOT weaker than Fallout 3 in its vanilla form so it desperately needed mods. Fallout 3 has its flaws but at least it's interesting and fun to explore. There's tons of room for new locations including tons of new quests as well though and I see this as a positive thing. I know how annoying it is to mod for games which are already packed - like Deus Ex for example.

Fallout 3 is only interesting and "fun to explore" to the casual gamer, quite honestly, with its boring level cells (repeating over and over), juvenile design and the fact that it's all too easy to outclass anything in the game at early levels (not to mention get the best equipment, reach level 20 and max out the only useful skills early on) all combine to make the game a tedious exercise in walking around, killing things, and looting.
I had more fun doing that in Ultima VI, which is more than a decade old now and features an unpolished combat system, not to mention less interesting loot.

Stream lining is entirely different from dumbing down which is entirely the case with Fallout 3. SPECIAL is neutered for God's sake, try to make a 1 Charisma character in Fallout 1 or 2 and speak to anyone expecting to get somewhere, try to make a 1 Endurance character and survive a single engagement without pumping yourself full of stims, try playing a 1 Strength character and play with the constant penalties to firing or swinging any weapon because you're such a massive pansy. Setting any stat lower than 3 in Fallout 1 or 2 meant you were in for a tough time in some form in another.

Fallout 3? I beat the damn thing with 1 Strength, 1 Endurance, and 1 Charisma without breaking a sweat, and somehow my Speech still ended up maxed out (thus not missing a single Speech option), hundreds, literally hundreds of excess stimpaks I never required at all, proficiency in Energy Weapons and Small Guns, despite the fact that my 1 Strength should make me a massive pussy that couldn't handle the recoil on the weakest weapon. This character would be crippled in Fallout 1 or 2.
But those penalties are a good thing, it means your characters are unique, one character can't excel at everything, in Fallout 3, that is not the case, as long as you max out a skill or get it to a very high level (which is so easy to do it doesn't even require much effort) you'll be perfectly fine at whatever you want to do.

This means that every character is eventually the same, instead of being able to do three different things that no other character could as in Fallout 1 or 2, your character in Fallout 3 is maybe limited to one at the most, you didn't max out his Science skill, boo hoo, now you can't use those "liberally applied" Very Hard computers scattered about, but enjoy having the ability to do practically anything else as long as it doesn't involve a rare and useless skill check.

Fallout 3 is an embarrassment of an RPG, the stats mean nothing, thus the mathematical probabilities that define a unique character do not exist. The choice and consequence is completely bizarre and illogical, littered with worthless NPCs, bad writing, and a lack of definition on the player's intention which all serves to offer lukewarm segments of mediocrity. The game is so unprofessionally made that I'm amazed that it was put out on shelves, much more amazed that anyone would consider the game to be something good.