Fallout 3/YMMV: Difference between revisions

* [[Author's Saving Throw]]: The new ending for ''Fallout 3'', provided by DLC for the widely unpopular ending.

* [[Base Breaker]]: Moira Brown. People either love her and view her as a hilarious adorably quirky woman with a good heart, or an annoying idiot who seems to want to get you killed on your various excursions in the name of her survival guide. It's hard to find people who are at the middle ground.

* [[Character Tiers]]: Hirable followers definitely come in tiers.

* [[Cliché Storm]]: The Aliens. They are little green men who ride around in a death ray using flying saucer and abduct humans for anal probing and other such things. [[Raygun Gothic|Note that this is entirely]] [[Invoked Trope|intentional]].

* [[Complete Monster]]: This game has quite a few of them. They include:

** Mr. Burke is another one. His back story isn't explained much, all we know about him is that he is Mr.Tenpenny's [[The Dragon|right hand man]], and Mr.Tenpenny wants Megaton (a peaceful town) nuked, because it ruins the view from his tower. He assigns Mr.Burke to detonate the atomic bomb in the middle if Megaton, under the condition that he evacuate the town first. Burke, however, completely ignores this, and goes out of his way to make sure that when the town is nuked, as many people as possible are caught in the blast. If you get Lucas Simms to arrest him, he shoots Simms dead (unless you are very quick on the draw) and assigns mercenaries to track you down. You get positive karma for killing him. However, if you don't kill him and help Roy Phillips (see below) break into Tenpenny tower, Roy (who is scared to death of Burke), will make Burke his right hand man. Not only that, Burke will go ahead and nuke Megaton, even though Tenpenny is dead and there is absolutely no reason to nuke the town. It's worth noting though that he CAN be redeemed if you're playing as a female Lone Wanderer with the Black Widower perk. Burke is more of an example of a [[Complete Monster]] whose status is a result of the actions that the player takes.

** Roy Phillips. He leads a ghoul gang who live in the horrible slums outside of the luxurious Tenpenny tower. He has tried repeatedly to get in, and when you meet him you can help get into the tower either peacefully or violently (by unleashing a horde of feral ghouls into the tower). Either way, even if he gets in and is allowed to live there peacefully, he and his gang ''still'' slaughter everyone there. But for some reason, you get bad karma if you kill him (although you can kill him without karma loss if he attacks first).

** Eulogy Jones, a brutal slaver boss who heads the Capitol Wasteland's largest slaver group and trafficks innocent adults and children en masse.

** ''You'' can be this if you choose to go that way. The pure [[Video Game Cruelty Potential]] is outstanding. You can brutally murder scores of people, sell children into slavery, nuke a town full of people for cash, burn a pyrophobic man {{spoiler|turned tree}} to death, {{spoiler|poison the Capitol Wasteland's water}}, annihilate the Brotherhood of Steel's headquarters via orbital bombardment, and so, so much more.

** There's an unnamed female Ghoul scientist you can run into near a large satellite dish who doesn't seem that out of the ordinary: she can't be talked to because she's running around like a headless chicken while you pick off nearby Talon Company Mercenaries. But a look in a nearby terminal she's been using show that she just so happens to be a crazed scientist who gained access to an old pre-war satellite that she was going to use to blow the continent to bits, for no reason other than for the hell of it. She doesn't even have any feelings of loyalty to the Talon Company Mercs she hired, and seems to want to betray them once she begins her orbital bombardments. While a very, ''very'' minor example of this trope, she's definitely worth a mention.

* [[Contested Sequel]]: Points of debate include the shift in gameplay from turn-based to real-time (among numerous other changes), the quality of writing, both in the main quest and in secondary quests and locations, and the change of location resulting in almost nothing carrying over from the first two games aside from the Enclave and Brotherhood of Steel.

*** Super Mutant Overlords now usurp the most powerful Super Mutant position from the Masters, and ''boy'' do they earn their stripes. They come packing Tribeam Laser Rifles or Super Sledges, and both weapons ''hurt''. The guns especially, since they have a high damage output and hit you with three seperate beams with every shot. But there's one nasty caveat that comes with it" Overlords deal an additional ''forty'' points of unblockable damage. It's quite telling how bad an enemy is when you basically ''have'' to disarm it first since you sure as hell won't eat through its health fast enough to kill it in one go with V.A.T.S. Thankfully though, they aren't too dangerous if they've been disarmed.

*** Albino Radscorpions aren't too different from their weaker brethren: they're still really fast, and lack any real weakpoints meaning that you can't take shortcuts when eating through their health. Unfortunately, that's ''exactly'' what makes them so dangerous, especially when their bulk and speed are combined with their higher power and the fact that they still like hunting in pairs.

** If you're a ''Fallout 2'' veteran unimpressed by the weaksauce Enclave troops fought in the base game, complain no more! Bethesda fixed by adding [[Elite Mooks|Hellfire Troopers]] to the Enclave's ranks! They're quite durable and don't go down easy, and they come packing Heavy Incinerators, which are essentially fireball-lobbing grenade launchers that will burn you to a crisp in seconds. And they're great shots too, and can pick you off from pretty far away.

** The Tribals. They are ridiculously powerful and hard to kill for no reason at all. Getting beaten by a bunch of tribals with hunting rifles and axes that barley wear clothes after curb-stomping the Power Armor wearing, Gatling Laser wielding [[Elite Mook]]s of the Enclave is rather jarring.

*** The Swampfolk are even worse. You don't really have to deal with the Tribals all that much, but the Swampfolk infest Point Lookout, and you almost never run into any alone (in fact, it's not uncommon to run into groups of ''five'' at once. Like the Tribals, they take a surprising amount of punishment and can kick your ass five ways to Sunday. The fact that they're a bunch of ugly, inbred hicks only serves to make it all the more insulting when they slap you around harder than the Enclave's troops ever did. Among the different variations however, the Creepers are easily the most dangerous since not only do they deal an unblockable extra 35 damage like the other Swampfolk, but they often tote Double-Barrled Shotguns which are among the most powerful weapons in the game. If you run into two or more, you'll be torn to pieces in seconds.

** Pretty much any enemy wielding a missile launcher or flamethrower. The former sends out fast moving projectiles that tend to do a ton of damage over a large area of effect as well as cripple limbs easily, and the latter does huge amounts of damage while obstructing the screen.

* [[Designated Villain]]:

** The Enclave has shades of this. Oh, they're evil; they experiment on Wastelanders, incinerate anyone who fails to pass genetics screening at their outposts, and have a "shoot on sight" policy with most outsiders. However, all except the last point is left to flavor text. The story itself never really gives any reason for ''why'' you have to fight the Enclave, Dr. Li just saying "it's not right" when telling the Brotherhood the Enclave can't be allowed to control the purifier. Diplomacy and negotiation probably left the table when Autumn shot a lab assistant before Li's eyes, but when the story is presented this way, it makes the Enclave-Brotherhood war come off more as a matter of personal pride than stopping an evil army.

* [[Draco in Leather Pants]]: The [[Player Character]] can play himself this way: a bloodthirsty killer with no morals what-so-ever, but who has maxed out their charisma and intelligence to the point where no one would dare argue. Except Three Dog, of course.

** Alistair Tenpenny seems to have a bit of this treatment going on as well; while he's perhaps not quite the [[Complete Monster]] his minion Mr. Burke is, he still shoots people from the top of a skyscraper for fun, he's still a complete bigot, and the fact that killing him nets the player a karma boost (one of the few occasions where this happens) suggests that even if he's now just a slightly senile old man (which is how he's generally viewed in this treatment), he's been responsible for some pretty nasty stuff in his life.

* [[Ear Worm]]: The Enclave Radio, and Galaxy News Radio station. Most memorable ones:

** ''I don't want to set the world on [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSK-1guFLDk fiiireee....]''

** Despite being a ghoul, Charon has a ridiculously large fangirl following, and is also loved for being a competent follower like Fawkes.

** And in typical Fallout tradition, Dogmeat is beloved for being a cute dog companion and for being a very useful partner come Broken Steel.

* [[Fan Dumb]]: Try reading an argument about the "Meaning" of Butcher Pete and keeping your sanity.

* [[Game Breaker]]: Several.

** For starters, ''every single add-on'' gives you at least one weapon that would be considered an [[Eleventh-Hour Superpower]] before the eleventh hour.

** The Chinese Stealth Armor from the Operation Anchorage DLC. Allows you to kill anything without ever being detected.

** The Grim Reaper's Sprint perk, restoring your action points once you leave V.A.T.S. if you killed someone in it. And you ''will'' kill someone, unless that someone is an Albino Radscorpion, Overlord or Behemoth.

** With Broken Steel, RL-3 levels up with the player at 10 times the rate he should, giving him absolutely ridiculous health. That, combined with the fact that he can be obtained ''very'' early provided the player knows where to look (and where to get 500-1000 caps) makes pretty much every other companion useless (except Fawkes, but that is pretty late in the game).

*** The same can be said for Dogmeat, who receives the same ''Broken Steel'' benefits as Fawkes and RL-3. Go right to the Scrapyard at the beginning of the game and you have a nigh-invincible [[Incredibly Lame Pun|(Dog)]] [[Meat Shield]] right off the bat! Oh, and unlike RL-3 and Fawkes, Dogmeat can be recruited regardless of your Karma.

** The game applies perk based skill bonuses upon selecting them, rather than after confirmation. During the level up screen, you can select a perk that gives skill bonuses, then go back to the skill distribution and see the game has added them already. But if you go select another perk and return to the skill screen, the added points remain. Repeat for more points.

* [[Harsher in Hindsight]]: Liam Neeson plays the main character's father and a widower. Less than a year after the game's release, Neeson's real life wife, Natasha Richardson, tragically passed away in a freak skiing accident. The scenes where he sadly talks about his dead wife in the game felt very strange after that.

* [[Iron Woobie]]: Gob. He seems to keep a stiff upper lip, (well, if he had lips) but the fact that his normal way of saying goodbye is crying "Don't hit me!" shows that Moriarty's done a number on him.

* [[Jerkass Woobie]]: Scribe Bigsley in ''Broken Steel'' is a smug, snarky, arrogant jerk who shows you nothing but disdain until you offer to help make his workload easier, and yells at his subordinates. However, he's stuck working around the clock in a dimly-lit room with no windows, has little support from the Brotherhood because their resources are still focused on the Enclave war, and has to oversee the distribution of the water to the various cities of the wasteland, which he does with limited manpower and limited money to hire more. He's also ''incredibly'' sleep-deprived is noted to pass out as his desk due to being overworked. He even acknowledges that he's being far too harsh on you if you call him out and makes it clear that he ''does'' appreciate what you've done for the Brotherhood, but it's hard to be happy when you're stuck with ''the'' job from hell.

** Be prepared to be berated by random bystanders for so much as looking at items that don't belong to you ''all the time''.

* [[Most Wonderful Sound]]: Anytime you gain Good Karma, it has a very delightful tone.

** Some of the random encounters might fall under this, but they are, by nature, a bit out-of-the-blue.

* [[Only the Creator Does It Right]]: The game is hated by some of the more die-hard fans of the first two games because it was created by Bethesda Softworks and not Black Isle Software. Especially noticeable when you consider that ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'' was given a more accepting reception and that some of the old employees of Black Isle incidentally worked on it.

* [[Painful Rhyme]]: ''They have things like the atom'' '''bomb''' ''... so I think I'll stay where I'' '''ahm''' ''... [[Ear Worm|civilizatiooooonnnnn, I'll stay right heeeerrreee!!!]]''

* [[Rooting for the Empire]]: It's easy to want to side with the Enclave in this game. As a sharp contrast to ''Fallout 2'' where they were fascist, genocidal monsters, in this game they're just looking to take control of the Capital Wasteland with intent to begin rebuilding "true" America. The only one of them who seems to be prejudice against outsiders and want to eradicate them is President Eden, Colonel Autumn seems to actually want to rule over the people. Granted they're still [[Jerkass]]es and are hostile towards you, but they don't really do anything evil and actually act like a more extreme version of the Brotherhood of Steel. Imagine if Autumn and James had been more reasonable to the other during negotiations—the project is peacefully turned over to the Enclave, they raid Vault 87 and get the G.E.C.K., the purifier is started and the Enclave begins using their vertibirds to fly clean water across the wasteland. Also keep in mind they have the manpower, resources and willingness to take out the raiders, super mutants and Talon Company mercenaries that make the wasteland such a nasty place to live. The only downside is that the local humans live under Enclave rule, but considering the abundant anarchy that threatens them, how much worse could it be?

** Only if you never visit an Enclave wilderness outpost. The computers note they're experimenting on the denizens of the wasteland, then killing them. Of course, a [[Villain Protagonist]] LW probably wouldn't care.

** It's made worse by the Wasteland being filled with a disproportionate amount of Raiders (psychotic), Super Mutants (psychotically powerful), and Talon Company (who are under standing orders to be as huge [[Jerkass]]es as possible), while everyone else clings to life in ramshackle huts. The Enclave is, quite simply, awful. But they're a preferable kind of awful compared to the other three factions. [[Utopia Justifies the Means|Is the idea of finally scrabbling together some semblance of civilization worth the dystopic hellhole that will likely result?]] That's up to you. And while you're thinking about that, [[Not So Different|Lord Ashur would like to have a word with you]]...

** Mayor Macready and Princess of Little Lamplight are also well hated for being annoying little brats who you can't punish due to the fact that children such as them are invincible.

** A lot of [[Jerkass]] characters such as Colin Moriarity and Knight Captain Durga get lots of hate simply because they're pretty damn good at getting their unpleasantness across to the player character.

** Roy Phillips. Take a [[Complete Monster]] who {{spoiler|violently slaughters every human in Tenpenny Tower save for his fellow monster Burke}} and is still viewed as the good guy in-game to the point where Three Dog calls you out for killing him, and you have a perfect hate-able character.

*** (Admittedly) obvious flaw aside - and his ignoring it is supposed to show why Zimmer is the "wrong" choice - the android is still a significant financial investment that took time and caps to build and activate.

** The Overseer's reason for being such an extreme isolationist is actually pretty sound. He thinks that the dangers of the outside will result in the deaths of everyone in the vault, particularly if a large group of raiders finds them. Considering what happened to [[Fallout: New Vegas|Vault 3...]]

*** Vault 34 and Vault 11 also show what can happen if an Overseer allows his people to get too much out of hand. Totalitarian authoritarianism seems more nuanced when balanced by the fact that all it takes is one asshole to get careless in the engineering area to doom the entire vault (something Butch was dangerously close to doing himself in 101's case).

**** Vault 34 failed because the overseer was ''too totalitarian'' and refused to left them leave the Vault. If they did they would never had a food problem which was a major reason for the unrest, and Vault 11 had a [[Lottery of Doom]].

** And General Jingwei in ''Anchorage''. He has a massive amount of health and an oversight in programming causes the American [[Powered Armor]] troops to turn hostile to the player without provocation. Add in the fact that you have no stimpacks in the simulation, and you're in trouble if you can't talk him down with the speech check because the damage he deals adds up really fast.

* [[That One Level]]: In general, Point Lookout is really unforgiving. While it's meant to be hard and is intended to be played after Broken Steel, it doesn't change the fact that the swamps are home to ''the'' most dangerous enemies in the game. For homegrown enemies, you have the Tribals during the main quest and the Swampfolk as normal enemies, and they are ridiculously powerful thanks to appearing in packs, taking a lot of hits to kill, and having unfair unblockable damage bonuses for their weapons. And returning enemies from the main game include Mirelurks, Sentry Bots, and ''FERAL GHOUL REAVERS.'' It's safe to say that you'll be dying a ''lot'' out here.

* [[Ugly Cute]]: Take Animal Friend, and the normally vicious mole rats will trundle harmlessly along the Wasteland. Sometimes they sit up to sniff the air, then drop back down to yawn and shake themselves.

* [[Unfortunate Implications]]: Whoo, boy. The [[Karma Meter|karma system]] is, to put it mildly, a complete and utter mess.

*** Note that once you EVER hit evil karma, Regulators will come hunting for your head. In fact, going back to good karma from evil karma means that BOTH the Regulators and the Talon Company mercs are gunning for you, your call to decide that is good or bad.

** And then there's the ending:

** The quest Tenpenny Tower has this. If you convince Tenpenny that ghouls are not all mindless, cannibalistic murderers, he allows them to move in to the tower. A few days after this occurs, the ghouls murder every resident, strip their bodies, and unceremoniously dump their corpses with feral ghouls around to presumably eat them. This includes the one resident who is extremely tolerant of ghouls. The major bigoted stereotype is actually justified by this quest.

** Reverse-pickpocketing a grenade onto a swamplurk (Point Lookout) is somehow bad karma. [[Flat What|What.]]

** Rad Resistance: +25% radiation resistance, clothing and RadX make it moot.

** Impartial Mediation: +30 to Speech skill at neutral karma, but remaining at neutral is tedious. Speech challenges can be exploited for a 100% chance of success, either through save scumming or maxing out the speech stat.

** Mister Sandman: Adds prompt to instantly and stealthily kill sleeping people for maximum experience, but it often glitches up and causes entire settlements to go hostile on you.

** Mysterious Stranger: He'll occasionally show up in VATS to provide a [[One-Hit Kill]] to any enemy, but he can glitch up, anything he kills doesn't provide you perk or quest-related benefits, and he has a low chance of appearing at all.

** Solar Powered: +2 Strength, +1 HP every 20 seconds while outside between 6:00 AM and 6:00 PM. Moot with drugs, health is easily replenished, and the HP recovery is ''incredibly'' slow.

** Explorer: All map markers are revealed, but not counted as "discovered." The Pip-Boy has a compass that directs you to all nearby map markers as soon as you exit the [[Forced Tutorial]].

** No Weaknesses: All SPECIAL stats below 5 increase to 5. Made moot with the Almost Perfect which raises all SPECIAL stats below 9 to 9.

** Warmonger: Instantly get all weapon schematics to level 3. Most are pretty easy to get to level 3 anyways and only Nuka Grenade and Bottlecap mine really gain much from being level 3.

** Rad Absorption: -1 rad every 20 seconds. Radiation is easy to get rid of and the rate of reduction is ''incredibly'' slow.

** Nuclear Anomaly: At 20 HP or less, you lose all your radiation, your health rises to 20 HP exactly, and you create a small nuclear blasts where you're standing. Although it's an amusing gimmick, anything that could drive you to under 20 HP at level 30 is probably going to be dealing MORE than 20 damage per hit, the blast re-irradiates you, damages your clothing, often cripples your limbs, damages any friendly NPC in it's radius, and occasionally it glitches up and fails to provide the healing; causing you to kill yourself.

** Punga Power!: Boosts healing and radiation removing effects of normal and refined punga fruit considerably. Stimpaks and RadAway are weightless and ''much'' more effective at their respective purposes than punga fruit. At least it's a perk given to you for free.

*** They're not weightless on Hardcore, mind.

* [[The Woobie]]:

** While that bastard Roy Phillips is heavily unsympathetic, his girlfriend is someone who's definitely worth pitying. Bessie-Lynn is a diminutive flower of a Ghoul who was once very pretty, only to be shunned and hated for her ghoulification. It's very clear that she simply wants to be loved again, and is willing to hang around her sociopathic boyfriend in order to feel wanted once more. It helps that she had no part in {{spoiler|helping murder Tenpenny Tower's residents should you convince Tenpenny to let Roy's gang stay}} making her the only truly innocent member of Roy's trio.

* [[Woobie Species]]: The Feral Ghouls. Sure, it can be hard to sympathize with them after you've had your ass shredded like paper by the Reamers, but it's hard not to pity what were essentially decent folk turned insane and trapped in a miserable state of life until they're put out of your misery. Hell, if you sneak around (or use the Ghoul Mask) and watch how the Ferals move when they're acting benign, and you'll often see them start spasming violently, as if they're in constant agony.