ThaBenMan post=9.74419.861476 said:
crowTrobot post=9.74419.860941 said:
A question for the more familiar, though: If Fallout is set hundreds of years in the future, and the nuclear apocalypse itself doesn't take place until a long while from now, then why is the pre-disaster future semi-reverted to a 1950's America feel?
It's just for style really, even if it doesn't really make sense. I believe the term is "retro-futurism". Maybe it could be rationalized as an alternate universe where the 50's style outlasted the actual 1950's?
Picked up my copy at the midnight release, collector's edition. I LOVE the Vault Boy bobblehead, just as I expected, and the art book is really cool as well. I'll try the game out tomorrow, really looking forward to it!
In the first two games, it was for style AND for underlining the ever-present satire. Remember the intro of Fallout 1? Like a journal reel, with title cards like "Our boys keeping the peace in the occupied zone" followed by a clip of two heavily-armed soldiers executing a kneeling, unarmed civilian and then waving happily to the camera. THAT's satire. What Bethesda did was 1. Not understanding satire at all and 2. Treating their player base like morons by starting the manual out with stating "Imagine that the time-line split in two after World War II - one line developed into our universe, the other into the Fallout universe, which is like the future was imagined in the 1950's".
Seems they don't understand "condescending" as well.
And for comparison, the intro of this installment has Ron Perlman repeating his lines about "War never changes" over uninspiring stills of skulls, graveyards and rubble while texts like "Bethesda Softworks Presents" "A Bethesda Softworks game" "By Bethesda Softworks" are displayed. I WISH I was exaggerating, but I am not. Those three screens hit you before you have even reach character creation. (Which, by the way, is their patented Oblivion "try making a semblance of a human being out of a lump of dirty clay" thing. Only difference? Two-thirds of the available hairstyles are now variants of mohawks.)
I'm only a few hours into the campaign yet, but if it doesn't pick up soon I will simply be content to have my (low) opinion of Bethesda unswayed. I am simply not having any fun.