Fallout 3 Impressions and Opinions

[Enigma]

How do I get in the Broken Bow? I want to talk to Pinkerton but the only way in is through the locked door rated at very hard. Is there another way in other than spend a lot of time trying to unlock the door? Mind you I've tried using the "unlock" command on the console but somehow I am doing it wrong as the game won't unlock the door.

[Stark]

Do you just suck at the minigame? Just quarter the lock, find which area it's in, try a few spots, and when the pin changes to the 'gonna snap' position just exit. When you go in the spot is now different, but it's not that hard to find.

BTW lockpick minigames that pause the game = totally worthless. Just saying Thief did it better.

[Covenant]

There are very few places, Stark. I was extremely suprised that the Potomac River wasn't lethally radioactive, and glowing at night, as it made a lot of the game stupidly easy to just swim it. I could have gone for more background radiation even out in the wastes, but then again I'm also a Survival Game fetishist who would like there to be a Fatigue level as well, so you need to bring water with you, or seek it out, lest you suffer what could be simply described as water withdrawl in game terms.

When the game was announced and they talked about the battle of balance between drinking/eating and radiation, I figured you'd be spending most of the game weak, thirsty, and suffering from those conditions unless you willingly dosed yourself with radiation--and that this would act as a 'soft cap' for healing outside of stimpacks and chemicals (which are also prone to addiction) and provide the character with hard choices. I'm not sure this would improve the game, but back in the day, Wasteland had a similar feature. You could contract radiation poisoning in radioactive areas unless you had Rad Suits and a geiger counter to tell where they were, and your condition would slowly degrade until you were treated. And your canteen was essential to avoid heat-related illness as well. Oblivion knows how to model daylight-based sicknesses for Vampires, and being out in the hot wasteland sun should be painful and fatiguing for everyone. Heavier gear means more fatigue. Moving only at night lets you avoid the sun, but then more dangerous creatures (Radscorpions were traditionally darkness-loving critters) are out and about. Now, combine this with Oblivion's random encounter while waiting/sleeping function and you could make a game where you have to move at twilight and dusk mostly, carry water with you, avoid radiation, find safe bed-down spots, and conserve ammo. That sounds like a very deep "Post-Nuclear Survival" game, and I bet it'd be fun. For the nonsurvivalist/casual gamers who want to avoid it, you could obviously just hire/walk with a caravan.

Does anybody else think its cripplingly lame that you can use a fucking pool cue as a weapon but not a scalpel, rake, or shovel?

I don't think anyone thinks that, no. It wouldn't be hard to turn those kinds of things into weapons, but you have to wonder about the benefit of it. In a game where everyone has a gun, who in their right mind would use a shovel? If you want a melee weapon or unarmed weapon, Rippers and Powerfists are common enough to make them useful. It would have been nice to be able to throw Baseballs like grenades and do a little bit of impact damage, but it's not really a big deal that there are simply limits to what I can do.

If real weapons were rare, and improvised weapons rather lethal, I could see it. You could definately make them somewhat handy by giving them a significant boost to damage while sneaking, so people would feel eager to pick up a garden gnome and throw it at the back of someone's skull to sneak-attack them, but wouldn't go around with piles of dishware to throw/stab people with.

Hunting Rifle

The hunting rifle is super wank. However, if you don't want to spend the points on small arms, my end-run works well for getting an energy rifle, and then you can just sell all the hunting rifles and small arms ammo supplies you find to buy micro-fusion cells. And as you said, most things early hate the hunting rifle, so you can use it in manual, just like the rest of the small arms weapons. No need to buff the skill at all unless you want to use it for VATs sniping.

Halp Pinkerton Door Stuck

Jump in the water. What are your graphics settings? Can't you see the underwater entrance, and heard of it from Rivet City folks? Swim down near the broken part of the broken bow, nearest the rest of the ship, and find the underwater passage. It sucks but whatcha' gonna do--except max out lockpick and spend a long time picking.

[Shinova]

And watch out for the mirelurks. And don't forget to periodically get air, like I forgot to on my first try.

[Stark]

The low radiation even makes resists etc useless; because it's a laughably primitive highschool reduction system (used by Beth for ages), 1 rad everywhere = 1 rad for everyone, regardless of protection. So in general, radiation is only a small annoyance, but there is essentially no defence at all. It's only with the rare higher-rad areas that resists/armour matter.

[Ryan Thunder]

Does anybody else think its cripplingly lame that you can use a fucking pool cue as a weapon but not a scalpel, rake, or shovel?

I don't think anyone thinks that, no. It wouldn't be hard to turn those kinds of things into weapons, but you have to wonder about the benefit of it. In a game where everyone has a gun, who in their right mind would use a shovel?

You're kinda missing the point. I wouldn't actually use them, but it would make me feel better to have raiders come after me with an assortment of improvised weapons rather than either a pool cue or a baseball bat

It also annoys me that I can't equip my character with a rake for lulz.

[Enigma]

<snip>

Halp Pinkerton Door Stuck

Jump in the water. What are your graphics settings? Can't you see the underwater entrance, and heard of it from Rivet City folks? Swim down near the broken part of the broken bow, nearest the rest of the ship, and find the underwater passage. It sucks but whatcha' gonna do--except max out lockpick and spend a long time picking.

The graphics setting are set at low. So thanks for your help.

[Covenant]

Yeah, if it's at low, it may be hard to see. You'll want to check close, it's around that corner.

You're kinda missing the point. I wouldn't actually use them, but it would make me feel better to have raiders come after me with an assortment of improvised weapons rather than either a pool cue or a baseball bat

It also annoys me that I can't equip my character with a rake for lulz.

No, that's exactly the point. The raiders have a million guns, knives, grenades and rocket launchers, so there's no reason why there would ever be a raider using a shovel as a weapon. Guns are found everywhere, as are a variety of other weapons, so you would need to eliminate 99% of the game's firearms for a shovel-wielding raider to be at all sensible. Otherwise people would be wondering why crates of guns are lying everywhere but the raiders are using pipes, shovels, and tire irons (two of which are real melee weapons in-game) instead of the plentiful miniguns and assault rifles.

If you want to say that there should be very sparing use of firearms in the Wastes, that's one thing, but that would go against a great deal of the Fallout experience. In the earlier games it's true that Raiders had a decreased availability to firearms, but there were plenty of them in their posession and you got Uzi's, Hunting Rifles and Shotguns early on in Fallout 1 anyway, especially from raiders who sometimes dropped Desert Eagles. Either way, nobody is going to be using a shovel when there's more sensible weapons around, and making a shovel into a sensible weapon would require the most astounding military purge ever.

[Ryan Thunder]

Yeah, if it's at low, it may be hard to see. You'll want to check close, it's around that corner.

You're kinda missing the point. I wouldn't actually use them, but it would make me feel better to have raiders come after me with an assortment of improvised weapons rather than either a pool cue or a baseball bat

It also annoys me that I can't equip my character with a rake for lulz.

No, that's exactly the point. The raiders have a million guns, knives, grenades and rocket launchers, so there's no reason why there would ever be a raider using a shovel as a weapon. Guns are found everywhere, as are a variety of other weapons, so you would need to eliminate 99% of the game's firearms for a shovel-wielding raider to be at all sensible. Otherwise people would be wondering why crates of guns are lying everywhere but the raiders are using pipes, shovels, and tire irons (two of which are real melee weapons in-game) instead of the plentiful miniguns and assault rifles.

Which makes perfect sense. But here's the trick: they still come after me with baseball bats and pool cues in spite of having access to those weapons in some places.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I've never encountered Raiders with miniguns. Rocket launchers are all too common, but miniguns, no. Have you?

If you want to say that there should be very sparing use of firearms in the Wastes, that's one thing, but that would go against a great deal of the Fallout experience. In the earlier games it's true that Raiders had a decreased availability to firearms, but there were plenty of them in their posession and you got Uzi's, Hunting Rifles and Shotguns early on in Fallout 1 anyway, especially from raiders who sometimes dropped Desert Eagles. Either way, nobody is going to be using a shovel when there's more sensible weapons around, and making a shovel into a sensible weapon would require the most astounding military purge ever.

It isn't a sensible weapon, and it isn't meant as one. A pool cue is hardly a sensible weapon either, though.

[Stark]

That's a amusing point; the AI is often too dumb to pick up their weapon if yuo shoot it out of their hands, so they'll lose their rocket launcher and decide to rush the power-armoured headshot machine with a knife.

It never, ever works.

[born in shadow]

On a somewhat unrelated note, I've never encountered Raiders with miniguns. Rocket launchers are all too common, but miniguns, no. Have you?

Once, I believe. He didn't last very long though, I must say. Seen more than a few with flamers though, so I guess there's that.

That's a amusing point; the AI is often too dumb to pick up their weapon if yuo shoot it out of their hands, so they'll lose their rocket launcher and decide to rush the power-armoured headshot machine with a knife.

It never, ever works.

Really? I tend to spend a lot of my time shoot rifles/miniguns out of Super Mutant hands and they always rush to get it, even when it'd be better to just run away. I've seen others actually run after the weapons when they've been shot out of their friend's hands.

-Aaron, killed two mutants that stopped to go collect a minigun

[Stark]

I've disarmed a lot of rocket guys, and they only seem to pick it up if they randomly decide to - sometimes they run for ages to get it, sometimes they ignore it right at their feet. This is called 'Bethesda sucks and just made it 50% chance to pick up'.

Stark - telling it how it is

[Ryan Thunder]

I've disarmed a lot of rocket guys, and they only seem to pick it up if they randomly decide to - sometimes they run for ages to get it, sometimes they ignore it right at their feet. This is called 'Bethesda sucks and just made it 50% chance to pick up'.

Usually, they don't go after it because I've blasted it into uselessness with the same shot that blew it out of their hands.

Stark - telling it how it is

Tell me you didn't mean to post that.

[Stark]

Usually, they don't go after it because I've blasted it into uselessness with the same shot that blew it out of their hands.

I've killed plenty of npcs that never got a shot off and their weapon is already at zero condition. I'm going to go out on a limb and say NPCs might get a free pass on that mechanic, just like with ammo.

[Covenant]

Hmm. I would agree that when weapons are available, they don't have much reason to be using pool-cues. I don't see it that much, but occasionally some dumbshit with a knife charges my position, but I think that's partially because they're crazy. Point granted though. Personally, I would enjoy seeing guns and ammo far less common, or at least less reliable, but I think that's hard to do within the Fallout theme.

For the record, I have seen plenty of Minigun, Flamer and Rocket raiders. The minigun users are less common, but rockets and flamers seem pretty available to the Raiders. I've never seen them using energy weapons yet, so it's possible the raiders simply picked up the gun off of a dead super mutant I left in the area, I rarely collect miniguns for sale. Too heavy. Seeing as they do usually arm themselves, that may explain their rareness. Also, go to the Bethesda Ruins, the guys there have nastier equipment, including Sniper Rifles and other heavy hitters.

Usually, they don't go after it because I've blasted it into uselessness with the same shot that blew it out of their hands.

I've killed plenty of npcs that never got a shot off and their weapon is already at zero condition. I'm going to go out on a limb and say NPCs might get a free pass on that mechanic, just like with ammo.

It's likely it was either destroyed in the firefight by stray fire, or broke from use. Usually when the badguys don't rush to re-arm themselves it means their weapon is destroyed, and I've never personally seen a guy use a gun up until the point I killed him, just to find it broken. Unless the reason he died is because I shot him and possibly hit the weapon too, which happens a lot in unarmed combat. Several times I've seen enemies lose their original weapon then go grab an assault rifle from a dead buddy, so I think the AI is working properly there.

[Stark]

I frequently find weapons on NPCs that never had a chance to shoot already be at zero condition. I'm aware that in VATS the gun has 'health' and that you can break it as well as knock it out of their hands (indeed, is it possible to knock it out without reducing that life bar to zero?) but I'm not convinced yet that that bar is the actual condition of the weapon, which always seems to be much, much lower even if you never hit it.

It goes without saying that if you let a raider fire his .32 pistol at you, it will never break simply from use.

[TC Pilot]

I had an interesting scripted encounter with a raider with a flamethrower. North of the big quarry is a bombed out church with all the signs of raider habitation. Going in the front door spawns a raider with a flamethrower on the side of the church. Going in the back door spawns an on-fire wastelander and, surprise surprise, a raider with a flamethrower.

[Covenant]

It goes without saying that if you let a raider fire his .32 pistol at you, it will never break simply from use.

I don't believe that's correct. One time I had a hilariously bad savegame situation where I did things out of order and had to fight that GNR Behemoth by myself with those two morons as backup. One of them had his weapon break during the fighting simply from use--that or he magically dropped it, and had to go scav another weapon, and got his head caved in. Pretty funny.

In any case, no matter what, the game is hilariously easy. You could arm ALL the raiders with miniguns and fat boys and it would merely rise to the level of challenging. I've considered modding this as I did mod Oblivion in the past, but I want to wait for a construction kit if I can. I've looked at the mods put out already and I feel that most of them, in their goal to become more Fallouty, have forgotton that Fallout has always been hilariously easy. People talk about guns being rare, or stimpacks being expensive and hard to use, or combat being a real challenge. Were they playing the same game as me? My armored sniper with a gauss rifle could frag guys all day and never break a sweat, was dripping in stimpacks, and I can really never remember having much trouble at any point in the game. It was slightly more tactical, but it was just as easy. It's just that when you press the game hard it becomes clearly easy, since you realize that they're not missing you because of your brilliant hiding spot--it's because they're all blind compared to you.

I've looked at these mods. Okay, more rads, less stims, less ammo, harder, etc. None of this is going to change a thing. I play on Very Hard, I never use stimpacks, I melee Deathclaws using my unarmed skill. You could drop the XP gain to next to nothing, remove all the ammo in the game, and it will still be relatively simple to win through superior brainpower. But that's the fun part--they should really stop trying to make the game grittier in only the most mundane sense (grr more enemies, I am teh hardass) and just make the game fun. If it's too easy for them, well, removing stimpacks and increasing radiation won't matter worth a damn, since none of that matters anyway. They're just going going to make it less fun.

[Stark]

Really? It's odd that you'd see that on guys that should arguably have the best shit in a situation where there's no location-targeted damage - it may be that the Behemoth attack hits all hit zones or something, and that their gun is being broken by damage and not use.

I really can't get behind the increased difficulty stuff either; I also play on the hardest diff, and it's still just a retarded headshotfest. The game is simply not designed to be the kind of Wasteland scavenge-em-up that people expected.

[Ryan Thunder]

I play on Very Hard, I never use stimpacks, I melee Deathclaws using my unarmed skill.

How the hell do you pull that off? You're either lying, or have an absolutely ridiculous computer.

[Stark]

Turns out the Deathclaw fist kills deathclaws in a single VATS with good unarmed skill.

BTW game may be broken.

[Covenant]

I play on Very Hard, I never use stimpacks, I melee Deathclaws using my unarmed skill.

How the hell do you pull that off? You're either lying, or have an absolutely ridiculous computer.

It's really not all that complicated. If I felt like taking a video of it, I could, it's easy to replicate in Ol' Olney. It's very very simple with chems like Med-X, Jet and Psycho, but I don't bother anymore, and you wouldn't either once you get over the initial terror of seeing them. Having played the shit out of Oblivion's melee game, a lone large Deathclaw fight is hardly much to wet yourself about. If you're going to be using unarmed at all, you should grab the Iron First perks to give you +15 to unarmed damage, and have your Deathclaw Gauntlet in good repair. Mine was doing 40 damage before I got bored and beat the game, usually dealing a critical on every slice, and I had taken Better Criticals. Once you get the Stunning Fist/Strike/Whatever perk, the fight is stupidly easy. But let's assume you don't.

What you need to realize is that the Deathclaw's strikes can be absorbed by your right-mouse button defenses. On a high unarmed skill, this means you're absorbing a great deal of the attack every time it swings, meaning that even in a worst case scenario you can trade blows with it. However, this is merely defensive, the best way to take down the Deathclaw--assuming you can't sneak it for huge damage--is to intercept it's charge and swipes with VATs. This'll let you get off the first strikes, avoid it's charge attack, and put you into good clawing position. You'll want to do a lot of backing up and charge-punching, with small little swipes to rack up critical hits, and making note of how far it slides when you hit it. I can knock them out of their swing reach with my 100 unarmed. Go into VATs anytime you've got enough for a swipe or two in order to avoid damage, but if you can knock it back a substantial distance, use that to force it into chasing you, which makes it possible to kill a 'claw without even taking a hit--so long as you use VATs. You'll be suprised how fast the things go down. I can actually tear the head off a Yao Guai in like... one or two hits. It's pretty pathetic.

Note, if you do this same strategy with the Stunning Fist perk you're likely to KO the Deathclaw in the initial swings, meaning it will fall over and twitch for 30 seconds before standing back up to fight. There's no way in hell it can survive that long while you're pounding on it, and this means you can easily take on multiple Deathclaws at once so long as you make sure to spread your VATs strikes and try to stun one or two.

Other things to exploit are manual aiming in melee. You can aim for the face like I recommend in order to make the thing recoil and cry about it's poor face, but you can also aim for it's knees and hope to gimp it. Kiting a 'claw is really sad to see, but if you're feeling mean it can give you a bit of a breather. Plus, if you're losing and have no pride, you can just stimpack yourself. The thing will take a good 6-8 swipes to kill you, generally, so it's not like you're in any rush.

[Stark]

What's the go with those deathclaws that spawn with low health? I'll often hear one behind me, spin around and fire... and it just dies. I don't understand how the game handles randoms (I do find it amusing that it's so broken though, like having Bittercup spawn in the middle of a super mutant base or Donovan spawn out of view and get killed by raiders before you even know he's there).

[Covenant]

What's the go with those deathclaws that spawn with low health? I'll often hear one behind me, spin around and fire... and it just dies. I don't understand how the game handles randoms (I do find it amusing that it's so broken though, like having Bittercup spawn in the middle of a super mutant base or Donovan spawn out of view and get killed by raiders before you even know he's there).

There are several Special Encounter spawns that drop nearly dead Deathclaws in there to give you a taste of fear, but they may also have a dead Wastelander/Raider nearby. On this corpse will be the Deathclaw Gauntlet schematics, so finding a mostly-dead Deathclaw is a lucky thing usually. It is also possible that you just arrived too late in a random encounter with one and something else, and the something else lost, but inflicted significant damage.

[Stark]

Well I've seen enough hilarious 1 raider/1 enclave/1 deathclaw/1 molerat spawns to know all about that, but it just seems daft they way they play out.