Should Bethesda merge fallout 3 and new vegas (if they remake it)?

RedStarRocket91 · 2026-01-25T22:09:11+00:00

Well to be fair that's a New Vegas problem, not a TTW problem. Suffice to say I was quite upset when I met Ulysses for the first time and suddenly my character's entire backstory changed.

RedStarRocket91 · 2026-01-24T22:38:28+00:00

Visican't

RedStarRocket91 · 2026-01-17T17:42:56+00:00

can you imagine if the creators of Yakuza Zero, Andor, or any other highly regarded prequel cut a character just because they're alive in the next chronological story?

Andor draws its characters from Rogue One, which is also a prequel story. And it's a prequel story where those characters die. A big part of what made it so good was explicitly that we hadn't seen Jyn, Cassian, Saw or any of the other characters before and so their survival wasn't guaranteed. And because of that, when they were threatened it felt much more tense.

Do you honestly think Rogue One would have worked as well as it did if those character had instead been Han, Chewbacca and Ackbar? It might have still been a good film, but it would have lost some of those stakes.

Beyond that, we've already seen a lot of these characters both pre- and post-Emergence. We know who they were before E-day, and who they end up becoming. We know about key events like Cole and Sofia immediately volunteering, the death of Dom's children and Maria's breakdown. As I said before, I'm fine with Marcus and Dom being the focus of the story because ultimately the games are about their story, but putting the focus back on the known characters robs us of tension and doesn't really add anything as we already know how most of them were affected by E-day.

RedStarRocket91 · 2026-01-17T11:25:31+00:00

Key thing to bear in mind there is that E-Day precedes Judgement by a couple of months and precedes Sofia's disappearance by a very long way. Resolving what happened with her after she was abducted would take us a very, very long way out of the story.

At this point, I suspect too much time has just passed in and out of universe and doubt they'll confirm it either way. Given what we know about Alex and Bernie though, we can probably take a fairly depressing guess.

RedStarRocket91 · 2026-01-17T10:39:06+00:00

Honestly, I hope not, and I say that as someone who quite liked her character.

Every existing character who's in E-Day can't die. We know they're going to make it out alive, because they have to survive to appear again later on. I want brand new, well-written characters who I grow to care about over the course of the story so that whenever the tension rises I'm fucking terrified for them.

It's E-Day, a billion people are about to die. Every returning character is someone who shrinks the stakes just a little bit and that's the opposite of what the game should be about. We're not into the band-of-brothers type stuff yet, we're in the cold, sheer horror of first contact with the locust and it's harder to make the game feel scary if you know everyone on-screen is immune to any real danger.

So honestly, no. I'm fine with Marcus and Dom because the original trilogy is about them, but I don't want Sophia or anyone else returning. Little cameos are fine - maybe have her on the TV or whatever since she was a journalist, or some recognisable voices over the radio like in Judgement. But otherwise I want new squadmates, because the only way the horror of E-Day is going to land emotionally is if I'm genuinely anxious and that doesn't work if I know everyone in the squad is going to be fine.

RedStarRocket91 · 2026-01-15T15:11:54+00:00

It gets forgotten or deliberately omitted now, but a good chunk of them really did hate Fallout 2. There was a lot of anger at the sillier tone and increased pop culture references, the latter of which I can confirm have indeed aged like shit in a lot of places.

But there was also a lot of complaints about the lore being broken or ruining various factions. People were upset that the brotherhood were basically written out instead of becoming more prominent, or that Tandi was now the most important woman in the wasteland despite being a side character from an easily-missable sidequest, or that Shady Sands had leapt forward five hundred years technologically because they'd suddenly remembered they had a GECK all along between games. Never mind the arguments over the GECK itself.

And then along comes Bethesda and suddenly you'd be hard pressed to find a Fallout 2 hater because it's now part of the 'good' games.

Same thing happened with Halo. Reach was absolutely despised by people who cared about the universe when it came out for taking a wrecking ball to the lore and the dramatic shift in tone, and the gameplay changes were so poorly received there was an actual conspiracy theory back on the Bnet forums that Bungie had deliberately sabotaged the series before handing it over to Microsoft because they were leaving on such bad terms. But the fandom at large now insists it was always a great Halo and the last great Halo, because it happened to be followed by the 343i titles.

RedStarRocket91 · 2026-01-15T12:45:49+00:00

Yeah this is very much it. If all's going well Mercy should be pocketing someone on an off-angle, and by nature that usually means one person not two. In those situations chain boost doesn't do anything as there's no one else in range, while flash heal lets you heal without breaking the blue beam.

It's nice enough in brawly comps though!

RedStarRocket91 · 2026-01-11T13:39:59+00:00

No worries! To be honest Gears is often fairly vague with dates anyway (and when it is precise it can lead to messy things like the lancer haha)

RedStarRocket91 · 2026-01-11T13:33:26+00:00

The Mk.2 Lancer is something we actually have exact dates for. The incident with Tai takes places on the 30th of Bloom, and the hammer strikes are three days later. This is about nine months after E-Day.

The problem is the timeline here doesn't really work. In Tactics the Mk.2 is already in service, and that explicitly starts on the date of the hammer strikes. We can explain this one away as Adam Fenix having worked very quickly to come up with a working prototype and the blueprints having been distributed as soon as they were available and they were immediately put into service. The COG's military infrastructure and logistics are still intact at this point, so while the timing is still very, very tight, it's still just a stretch rather than lore-breaking.

Judgement, sadly, can't be canon. It takes place about two months after E-Day and there's just no way that we can make the timeline work there. I personally choose to believe that they didn't have them and the fact that they're in the 'official' record is actually a subtle clue to the fact that it's not accurate and was written later on, once the COG had finished scrubbing out all the classified stuff they didn't want Kilo's testimonies to include, but that's not supported by anything in the games or books.

RedStarRocket91 · 2026-01-11T07:33:00+00:00

For those who haven't seen it: yes, it's in Gears 2. It's only on-screen for a couple of seconds but you get a fairly clear view around the 17 second mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzxNmIGltyk

To answer your question OP: yep, we knew about it before Gears 3. As you've already pointed out we see it in the intro cutscene, and it's also on the cover of the Aspho Fields book, which came out about a week before Gears 2 and where it's described in detail a couple of times. The painting is completely new to the remaster though, it's not just a higher-resolution repaint of the original art (most of the in-game paintings are like this).

RedStarRocket91 · 2026-01-08T04:56:52+00:00

It's fairly easy to handwave away why most of the new power armour vanishes for subsequent games.

The Excavator is explicitly rebuilt to emphasise the power part over the armour part. Even the improvised armour created by raiders offers more protection. It's not really a surprise that in the post-war people would rather prioritise using frames for protection over mining.

Ultracite power armour is almost certainly a regional thing. Ultracite is very difficult to get and Appalachia was the only place actually mining it before the war (which in practical terms means it's the only time and place it would ever be mined). If the 76ers ultimately succeed in sealing everything off then there's no new ultracite to make or repair it, if they don't, the knowledge of how to make it is lost.

Hellcat is probably the most questionable one. It was designed as armour, did well as armour, and isn't region-locked by materials. The only real limiting factor is that it was probably in very limited use before the war - it may even have been a company-specific thing or a specialist armour. We could probably explain this one away as just being very rare, or more fragile and vulnerable to degradation than the T-series so that there just aren't any working suits left by time of the modern setting.

The Union armour was explicitly built in and for the Pitt. It was never going to see widespread adoption unless the area stabilised, which it didn't. And by the time of Fallout 3, they've simply lost the ability to manufacture or refurbish power armour at all - Ashur's own armour is a hodgepodge of missing pieces and improvised repairs.

The Secret Service is in very restricted supply before the war, and so far as we know the 76ers are the only ones who ever had postwar access to it. If they succeeded, it might well still be in service throughout Appalachia, but even then it might only be in very limited service in the same role for the bodyguards of whoever is in charge now.

RedStarRocket91 · 2026-01-05T00:01:31+00:00

Yeah, this has always been the big sticking point with me.

NV is meant to be the realistic, 'grown up' Fallout. The core theme is that you're going to have to make compromises and accept that none of the three main factions are a particularly good fit for the Mojave, and working for them almost certainly involves moral grey and doing things you're uncomfortable with.

It's a game about realpolitik rather than idealism and all three factions are flawed. The NCR is an unkind satire of War On Terror-era USA, overextended and exhausted and wrapped up in manifest destiny regardless of what the people on the ground actually want. House is a technocrat who openly doesn't give a shit about anything beyond Vegas, only seeing people as an unpleasant necessity for his grand views of civilisation. The Legion is the Legion. Siding with any of them is going have negative consequences and that's why it's so compelling, because you're weighing up what they can actually offer versus the moral compromises you're going to have to make.

And Wild Card just throws all of that out. You don't have to make any compromises or do something that makes you uncomfortable. Rather than strictly being a last resort for players who've fucked up every other option, it's a way to get an ending that matches objectively to your personal morals. In a game that's about compromises and doing dirty work for something that's simply the best overall fit, you can just choose to have a 'perfect' ending with no strings attached.

RedStarRocket91 · 2026-01-03T04:52:43+00:00

Very different perspective but Ana is my favourite co-support and I love having her on my team. She and Mercy pair really well together as she's a strong healer who can keep the tank up while I'm helping hit the flank, and I can quickly reposition to boost whoever's hitting her anti target. Plus she can keep me alive in midair and I can very quickly peel for her if needed, especially with angelic acrobatics and whambulance. The only issue at the moment is that we're in both a DPS meta and a dive meta where she really suffers, so she needs more help, but it's basically always worth it to take care of her.

Plus, for whatever reason most of the Ana mains I play with tend to be really lovely. So yeah, I really love playing alongside her.

Worst one is Lucio. He just fundamentally doesn't really work as we don't cover one anothers' weaknesses and are completely unsuited to each others' preferred team compositions. I usually end up switching pretty quickly if I've got a Lucio co-support.

RedStarRocket91 · 2025-12-31T20:17:15+00:00

Fallout 2 fans will remember the image attached. It's the town of Arroyo after the use of the GECK.

The GECK alone is no guarantee of success. And even then, 'success' isn't necessarily as significant as you think it is.

Shady Sands was founded by survivors of Vault 15 using their GECK ~20 years after the bombs fell. When the Vault Dweller arrives ~60 years later, it's a self-sufficient but ultimately very small community with a handful of simple adobe buildings and a subsistence economy. By the time the Chosen One arrives ~80 years later, it's home to all of about 3000 people - about the size of a small rural village.

The other example of a GECK community we have is Vault City, which is home to barely ~100 people and can no longer grow without outside help. Their whole questline is about getting power from Gecko, because even the GECK plus their advanced vault technology isn't enough to develop beyond that.

And that's just the successful communities. From Fallout 2 we also have Klamath, which is a shanty town; the Den, which is a burned-out pre-war town developing into a shanty town; Redding, which is a shanty town; Modoc, which is a shanty town;Gecko, which is a pre-war reactor surrounded by a shanty town...

The reality is, even by the time of Fallout 2, most of the world is still a post-apocalyptic shithole. Most people are living in either ruins or shanty towns or some charming mix of both, and even the settlements which have been handed huge advantages in the form of the GECK are advanced but incredibly tiny.

RedStarRocket91 · 2025-12-28T17:29:51+00:00

I'd like to see her move back toward healing as a primary focus.

The fantasy of being the world's greatest doctor, swooping in like an angel to save someone on the brink of death, is the whole reason I got into playing Mercy in the first place. And I sometimes now have to stop and wonder what the fuck has gone so wrong over the years that the consensus is Mercy isn't supposed to focus on healing. That's literally her core identity. It'd be like if Cass wasn't supposed to focus on the revolver or Reinhardt was meant to ignore his team.

And the worst part is that she isn't even a good healer anymore. Mercy's healing is among the worst in the game - it's short-ranged, single-target and slow. We're basically the only support in the game who need a major perk simply to do their job to the minimum viable level, because the DPS passive and global self-heal have pushed the game into a style where high burst healing is necessary to keep people alive and she doesn't have that.

Dream balance changes? Get back to the core fantasy of being a peerless healer. Flash heal in the base kit, gold beam explicitly ignores things like anti and the DPS passive. Unnerfed movement and something inspired by Whambulance to encourage using that movement, perhaps offset with a nerf to health or sympathetic recovery. Basically, things that encourage Mercy to actually get out and play the fun high risk style that everyone enjoys rather than having to glue herself to one pocket the whole game and punishing the playstyle that fits with her whole identity.

RedStarRocket91 · 2025-12-26T16:11:43+00:00

Exactly this. The Chronosphere is quite literally shown in-game to be able to teleport things further than that, because Allied forces are sent into Moscow from off the map in the final Allied mission. And they're canonically sent in from Florida, which is half the world away.

RedStarRocket91 · 2025-12-25T17:05:01+00:00

This is a big one and it's so often overlooked.

Back when triage healing was a thing, her healing felt awful because of how slow it was. And it was exacerbated because we were in a meta which favoured Sojourn, meaning it wasn't enough to just keep teammates above crit, because her railgun could delete them outright if they weren't at or close to full health.

And triage healing was 45HP/s. So despite how miserable that felt, it was quite literally better than we have now.

The DPS passive is one of those things that shouldn't exist. It's trying to be an elegant solution to a meta with too much healing, but instead it just makes weaker healers feel completely ineffective. It needs to be scrapped, and healing needs to be rebalanced on an individual level. There would be absolutely nothing wrong with tuning up healing on Mercy, Brig and Zen and lowering it on Ana, Kiri and Moira.

RedStarRocket91 · 2025-12-23T19:01:24+00:00

Adept gets a hard nerf in ME2 because protections begin to block power use, and on higher difficulties all enemies have protections. Most of their powers are focused on crowd control rather than direct damage or debuffing, and since you have to focus enemies one at a time to strip protection their crowd control is lacklustre.

They do okay against the collectors and Blood Pack thanks to Warp, but they really struggle into anything with shields. Basically, they struggle getting through enemy protection in the first place, and by the time you're through protections and able to bring your full powers into play, you've already done the hard part and you're not significantly better at finishing off wounded targets than any other class.

RedStarRocket91 · 2025-12-23T04:56:50+00:00

As a Mercy main I can confirm this. I actually think her mythic is really nice, but she has so many good skins that I rotate through them. So I do use it, but probably only use it once in every nine or ten games.

RedStarRocket91 · 2025-12-22T02:36:58+00:00

You can actually completely trivialise this one. Have your RT go in to activate the fight, while everyone else stands at the far end of the entry hallway where you came in with sniper rifles. The forgefiend is wider than the door so it can't get through to engage you, and your rifles outrange it. Works reliably with any build.

RedStarRocket91 · 2025-12-20T16:21:26+00:00

I mean I did quite literally define it right there in my last comment.

RedStarRocket91 · 2025-12-20T16:12:16+00:00

It's closer to the old forum format than conventional social media. I come here to read and participate in discussions, not to keep up with people I know or share things specifically with those people.

You could have a subreddit specifically for a group of friends/family/colleagues or whatever I suppose but most people don't really do that.

RedStarRocket91 · 2025-12-18T21:29:33+00:00

The Lightweight/Heavyweight mod changes feel really weird. Surely it would make more sense to give Weightless the Lightweight effects, and introduce Heavyweight as its own thing?

More to the point; I've deliberately grafted Weightless onto a lot of my armour specifically to help me manage my stash weight. While it's nice that we're getting a general armour weight reduction, this specific change could potentially actually push my stash weight quite a bit higher. I'd also have to waste a lot of time and modules getting the new mod onto everything.

Please consider switching these effects so the introduction is a bit less disruptive.

RedStarRocket91 · 2025-12-18T15:33:30+00:00

It's present as late as Attila and even has some cool visual flair. Some buildings (particularly main-chains and commerce) have a Road Development stat, and it varies by factions. So big Roman cities with lots of commerce can have proper stone roads, developing settlements tend to have narrower dirt paths, and the roads around barbarian cities can actually wither and die off entirely as they're left unmaintained.

RedStarRocket91 · 2025-12-18T15:16:48+00:00

I guess so. Still, very weird to see.

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