Overhaulout: Some guy tries to fix Fallout3's story

[PlanHex]

If anyone's interested, some guy over on Shamus Young's Twenty Sided Tale is trying to come up with ways to fix the Fallout 3 story/themes/writing:
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=40009
It's gonna be a weekly column thing, so more on the way. For now he's just laid down the ground rules and started on the very beginning of the game.

The goal here is simple: I’m trying to address the idea that a different approach to characters, storylines, and setpieces would have made F3 even more enjoyable. That some of the game’s largess was wasted on dead wood, and some of its best story features were underdeveloped and neglected. That there was more fun that we never got to have.

This exercise is most certainly not about:

• Reinventing the game to make it “mine,” or “real Fallout.” I’m not going to question the game’s grand design. If Bethesda decided early on they wanted super mutants, the mean fascist Enclave as villains, the brave virtuous Brotherhood of Steel as heroes, and the GECK as a deus ex machina that helps purify DC’s water supply, then I’m going to overrule the OG Fallout lore-keepers and keep all that in my treatment. If I was making my own game, I probably wouldn’t have a good side the player has to join and a bad side the player has to fight. But I have made my “own” games, and none of them were as successful as bootleg Fallout 3 mouthwash. As much as possible, I’m going to trust in the building blocks Bethesda chose to use; where my treatment varies will have more to do with mortar and the arrangement.
• Suggest any alterations or improvements to the game’s engine, mechanics, or world map. I think Megaton is a little silly, it’s uninspired for the charm perks to be exclusively heterosexual, and Speech shouldn’t involve a die roll. But I’m not going to touch these decisions. Mostly, this is because if I start changing the whole game it’ll become decreasingly possible to say if my alterations are improving anything. It’s easy to imagine an ideal version of a game that doesn’t exist, and claiming that this fake game would be better than a real one is even less useful than just asking you to imagine different writing.
• Proving I’m “better” than Bethesda’s writers. Firstly, I have absolutely no guarantee that you or anyone else will agree that my treatment works better. I’m throwing this out there as a thought exercise, no triumphant flourish, no filled-out application letter. Even if you do think you like my version better, please remember that I’m not only editing an existing draft, I haven’t had to preserve its merits through dozens of editing sessions, discussions with corporate, distillations through dialogue writers, encounters with scripters (“It turns out that whenever an NPC says ‘goodbye’ in a wistful voice, the game crashes on Windows XP?”), and voice-acting sessions. In short, writing for games is hard. Writing this series is easy.

Thought I'd share, since it seems interesting so far.
The guy is Adam "Rutskarn" DeCamp, who apparently made the game Unrest, but I've never really heard of him or that game.
That is, this is not written by Shamus Young himself, who the younger crowd may at least remember from this (less constructive, more abrasive) series on the Fallout 3 main story: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27085

 

[Kohno]

I (honestly) don't understand what's there to prove with projects like this, or what's to gain?

 

[Norzan]

You might as well rewrite the whole story from scratch even if you don't attempt to fix the lore inconsistencies, because the story is a broken, nonsensical mess.

 

[Kohno]

Yeah. Another useless "total conversion" a handful of people probably try for a moment.

One could theorize how the writing there might work a bit better... but outside ones own amusement and possibly some discussion (in some weird twisted way that might even be fun for a while), I do not see the point, so much wasted time and effort.

 

[PlanHex]

Yeah. Another useless "total conversion" a handful of people probably try for a moment.

One could theorize how the writing there might work a bit better... but outside ones own amusement and possibly some discussion (in some weird twisted way that might even be fun for a while), I do not see the point, so much wasted time and effort.

Eh?
This isn't a total conversion mod, it's just a series of articles made for people's amusement and possibly some discussion, so as to be fun for a while.
Everybody shitting on something eventually gets old as the same points get brought up repeatedly, so it's interesting to see how exactly someone could make something decent out of it. Something like script-doctor youtube videos or something.

 

[Kohno]

Eh?
This isn't a total conversion mod,

Meant to say "like" one, where people pick up few curiosities and then forget it.

Anyway, some details did go past me when I first skimmed through this, so... rock'n roll I guess.

 

[Black Angel]

We already have @Radiosity's Retrospective Rewriting or something like that.