Mylinkay Asdara said:
Two things - one, yes, they make us love our dad and want to find him - which... why the heck wouldn't we? He seemed like a decent guy. The premise of the plot is that he is a decent guy, in fact, who does the right thing all the damn time and is out to save the fricken world. So... I've just never understood the complaint about that "pre-set" as an excuse to have anything like a main plot. I mean - NV - maybe I don't give a crap that some guy shot and buried me, maybe I'm just thrilled to be alive, maybe I say screw it I won't tangle with a guy again who took me out once! Nope. I want revenge. I want to meet him. It's an imperative for my character regardless of how I think about it so there can, in fact, be the kick off of a main plot. Some things are going to have to be assumed at some point for a plot to be provided initially.
Second - the D.C. area being so far behind the curve of everywhere else is explained in the game both subtly and explicitly (no I don't know where, go comb a wiki if you like, I will explain) as due to the fact that, being where our capital is, they got bombed extremely heavily - as did much of the East Coast, where population is very concentrated and most of our political historical institutions and artifacts of significance are housed. By contrast, Vegas was shielded by House's countermeasures, and took relatively little bomb incoming and thus had an advantage in both preservation of existing structures and infrastructure and a lesser radioactivity. D.C. was highly radioactive and essentially reduced to rubble and remained irradiated through time due to the significance of the bombing they took.
First, yes he seems like a decent guy. But when we go out to find him, we do not specifically know that. He might be a alright Father, he could have been a drunk, a drug addict, maybe he beat you as a kid, the problem is that he is constructed that way to be a good father, which inherently isnt wrong. But consider that fact, you had the best father in the world for..say 20 years. You did everything together, you played together, laughed, cried and so forth. Yet he never tells you about his life, what he did before you were born, or even whether he plans to restart his work once you are old enough. Then he just leaves all of a sudden without informing you or anyone, setting events into motion that would have you beaten, incarcerated or killed at worst and made a social pariah at best.
When you go out to the world, you get a few nebulous clues about his past, like Moriarty, telling you that he came through megaton 20 years ago with you under his arm, but nothing concrete. Except her reaffirms that your Dad was a great guy. Three-Dog? He does the same, he sings praises about your dad and how he is a good man, but he tells you little. Even Rivet City, where you end up afterwards the details are sketchy. Only when you find your Dad he tells you why he went out of the vault to find Vault 108 and his plan to purify the water, realistically speaking, by this point you have done at least several things that could have potentially killed you and many more which got you into harms way. This may not be his intent, but its also his oversight for not considering that his departure from the vault, a vault which NOBODY leaves, might have repercussions on you which could potentially force you to flee from your safe home.
The plot doesnt give you any reason to really care about it, all the various characters do is tell you how great your dad is, but not why he is great, or what he does or why what he does is important. You have no reason to be proud of him until you find him and he explains it. Until then? Everything you had to get through to find him would make you cynical at best, bitter and hateful at worst, for the simple fact that just to get answers from him as to why he screwed up your life, you had to travel this far and get into this much danger.
Now granted, the revenge plot of new vegas isnt really any better, except it presents itself better. The game doesnt care whether you actually follow the plot, whether you take the road as the questlog indicates. You can go north instead of south, dangerous it may be it is doable. But the idea is that you arent exactly out for revenge, although it can be a motivator. Curiosity is another, why did Benny shoot you? What was so special about that Chip? None of it really matters in the sense that, even if you skip the whole mainplot, once you get to new vegas it comes up directly, when House asks to speak to you. So unless you avoid the Strip directly, which you can, you will end up back on track, but it happens more organically. You dont know House is waiting for you until you get there, and even then you can ignore him to go see Benny instead, if this was Fallout 3, you could not do that. New Vegas waits for you, you can do everything in your own order and the game will not feel static or stopped due to it. For example, after you meet House and get the Chip back from Benny, you go to the Fort, to see Ceasar anyway, well you can also just shoot the place up if you want. But say you talk to him first, he will actually reference to things you did that either hindered or benefitted him, he will even mention if you killed Mr. House, something you can choose to do without it having to be a quest to kill him.
And if we go with the Radiation, if as many bombs had dropped on DC as claimed, there would be nothing. Rivet City, Megaton, Tenpenny Tower, dead and empty ruins, or non-existant. On the East Coast, west of LA, lies the Glow, the remains of the West-Tek Research Facility that you have to find and visit in the first game. It was hit directly by several atomic warheads and is so irradiated that staying there for too long will kill you within a day, faster even without such things as Rad-X and RadAway, additionally it has active security defences which killed a Brotherhood Squad in T-51b Power Armor, some directly, some indirectly. Please note that the T-51b at the time of the war was the most advanced power armor produced, enclave variants were made after the great war. West-Tek was hit because it was a research and military installation, and we go there, 80 Years after the great war. If DC had been hit by as many, nobody would have survived, aside from people in vaults, of which only one within the DC area actually functioned as advertised (and nobody was allowed to enter or leave). Yet we are told that DC was hit the hardest, meaning by more bombs than West-Tek, or Los Angeles (the Boneyard, which by the way had a fully functional Vault-Tec Prototype Vault which people used for shelter as the bombs dropped), there would be nothing alive there, there might not even be any rubble left, the place would quite literally be glass.
For the sake of argument lets assume that DC is still there though, with that many bombs, the radiation would have been so massive that, if it was still in effect 200 years after the war, you could not take a single step without needing anti-radiation medicine, it wouldnt just be the water, it would be the soil itself. You could not grow any plants there, it is literally "scorching and salting the earth". Nobody could live there unprotected, not 20 years after the bombs, not 100 years after the bombs, not even 150 years after the bombs. Yet we are to believe that several thriving communities exist, some of which are older than 50 years? Or even older than 100? And if they are not, are we to believe they just sprung up 30-40 years ago, maybe 50? Just at random? Why would people want to live there if you can not properly feed any kind of population because you cant really farm with the ground saturated in radioactive crap. Plus, anyone who had lived there and was not instantly incinerated by the blast (Vault 101, the others failed before opening most likely) would have been ghoulified by the sudden, massive burst of radiation which caused their existence in Fallout 1 when the Bakersfield Vault-Door was rigged not to close entirely as per the Vault Experiment. So even then, everyone would be a Ghoul except anyone living in Vault 101, which would not be you, you came in from outside.
