Everything Wrong with Fallout Tactics

we recently completed a series on the full story of fallout tactics and we now have a better understanding of why bethesda decided that at least part of this game is no longer considered fallout cannon but for those who missed this series with this video i'll try to condense down everything that's wrong with the game that's not to say that it's a bad game it's not in my opinion and in fact i think it's an underappreciated game i had way more fun playing it than i thought i would and a lot of the lore presented in the game is thought provoking and has the potential to significantly alter our perception of the fallout universe in a good way that said there are some glaring flaws and lore mistakes that i think are pretty much unsalvageable we'll start with what i think is the biggest lore mistake and it takes place before we even start the game during the introductory cut scene the game tries to tell us that the brotherhood of steel came from the vaults on north america's west coast one group of military vault dwellers emerged almost unscathed they surveyed the wasteland and squared their shoulders for the task ahead these dedicated survivors salvaged the technology from the vaults technology that was studied replicated and fiercely guarded for they knew that while their power came from numbers their future lay in scientific knowledge in time they formed the brotherhood of steel but this is not at all how the brotherhood of steel was formed we learn from the events of fallout 1 while reading holotapes that we recovered while exploring the mariposa military base that the brotherhood of steel was in fact founded by u.s army captain roger maxson before the bombs dropped in 2077 after arriving at the mariposa military base and discovering the horrible experiments with fev that the us government was undertaking roger maxson and the soldiers under his command seceded from the union he ultimately did not suffer any consequences for his secession because the bombs dropped shortly thereafter roger maxson and the soldiers with him at mariposa then undertook an exodus from the mariposa military base through the irradiated california wasteland until he arrived at an abandoned bunker he and his men took possession of this bunker a bunker even before the war called lost hills and there founded the brotherhood of steel while they ultimately did end up in a bunker this bunker was never a vault-tec vault they never started in a vault they were never vault dwellers and this piece of lore is crucial to the identity of the brotherhood of steel their horror at what went on at the mariposa military base explains why they hoard technology they want to keep dangerous technology out of the hands of people who would abuse it like the american scientists who abused fev at mariposa if they were vault dwellers we lose that context the true origin of the brotherhood is something that remains consistent in fallout 2 new vegas and all of the bethesda fallouts it's only fallout tactics that strangely gets this wrong and there's no reason for them to get it wrong the entire plot of fallout tactics doesn't hinge upon this origin story point now i suppose we could say that ron perlman here is an unreliable narrator maybe in the fallout tactics universe the brotherhood didn't really come from a vault it's just that their descendants lost their true history and ended up believing that they came from a vault the problem is that the timeline here doesn't work out we learn from the cutscenes of fallout tactics that the brotherhood of steel on the west coast long after the death of roger maxson had a great schism the brotherhood found themselves at odds with their need for new blood versus their code of technological secrecy the debate was lengthy finally the elders ruled against sharing the technology with outsiders convinced that they would endure as they had before further discussion was discouraged and the elders ordered the minority on a mission across the wastes some of the brotherhood elders wanted to continue to hoard technology and remain distrustful of outsiders but some of them wanted to share technology and wanted to accept new blood into their ranks the hard-liners exiled the ones who wanted change and these brotherhood of steel soldiers migrated east in large airships these airships then crash-landed in the midwest we find one of these crashed zeppelins at osceola and there we not only find a survivor of the crash roshambo still alive after all of these years and still angry with the west coast chapter of the brotherhood of steel you know that i told them that storms would be the end of the air convoy i told them but did they listen to me heck no fool elders exiling their own brothers over nothing for nothing but we also discover that the leader of the super mutants in the midwest is paladin latham one of the original exiles from the west coast we have a confirmation on the whereabouts of the super mutant leader as you're probably well aware he calls himself gamoran we have recently linked him to the late paladin latham one of the finest warriors present on the great air convoy he was believed dead but after all these years he has resurfaced under a different identity and a much different purpose today is a day of joy and sorrow for the brotherhood gamoran was a traitor a murderer and a deceiver yet he was a paladin his brave deeds once brought much hope to the wasteland yet something happened to him when the great storm ripped his airship from the convoy and crashed it to the ground from that moment gamoran was born and the brotherhood lost its favorite son he and general barnake and general decker were some of the original exiles from the west coast and they're all still alive as one of the original air convoy crew i would like to express my thanks for recovering paladin latham's halidisk journal so it's not like this great brotherhood migration to the east happened a long time ago no this event happened within the memories of people who took part in that exodus and are still alive today so it's hard for me to think that within just a couple of decades that the brotherhood could have gotten their own origin story so wrong in general fallout tactics tends to get vault-tec lore pretty wrong ron perlman tells us that the vaults were essentially glorified bunkers for the rich and influential the great vaults were built to house the wealthy the powerful the influential and those deemed necessary to their survival but that's not true at all they were actually scientific experiments that vaultec was performing on the residents of their vaults and this wasn't just something that bethesda came up with later even the original vaults in the franchise had vault-tec experiments as we learn in fallout 2 from president dick richardson the vaults were set up to test humanity some had not enough food synthesizers others had only men in them yet others were designed to open after only six months they each had a unique set of circumstances designed to test the occupants vault 13 was actually a control group for the societal preservation program which was the project name for vault-tec's insidious experiments ah vault 13 was a special case it was supposed to remain closed until the subjects were needed vault 13 was in scientific parlance a control group the experiment of vault 15 also featured in fallout 1 was to see what would happen if you filled a vault with people that had radically diverse ideologies and cultures the idea that vaults were safe houses for the rich and famous is really only introduced to us here in fallout tactics for the first time this wasn't just the role of a few vaults apparently it was the role of all vaults we learned from a terminal at canyon city that instead of having the societal preservation program that experimented on their residents vault-tec instead had the exodus protocol with vault zero being the nexus of the entire vault network this neural network will also assist in vault zero's primary function to initiate mankind's post-war rebirth when outside temperature radiation levels and poison particle counts return to acceptable levels vault zero will remotely activate the exodus protocol which will initialize the integration of all vault dwellers onto the planet's surface vault zero being responsible for remotely activating the exodus protocol for all other vaults which gives them the go-ahead to leave their vaults and reclaim the wasteland so you see the vaults and fallout tactics had a very different purpose and it's not like this purpose was marketing only something vault-tec used to sell vaults or convince the rich and powerful to sign up for the vaults now we find these holotapes on private terminals housed on vault-tec computers as part of vault zero's computer network never meant for public consumption now that said vogtek is never mentioned by name in fallout tactics i suppose we could argue that vault zero and these other vaults mentioned in fallout tactics were made by someone else some other company making their own competing vaults unrelated to vault-tec this would explain why they had a very different purpose and it would explain some of the corruption we uncover while listening to the holotapes at canyon city committee rules thirty to three in favor of streamlining vault zero's computer backup system costs from 24 billion dollars to 2.3 billion these cuts will take place immediately this ruling was based on the dwindling chance for actual nuclear war taking place along with much needed pay increases to senior committee members furthermore the subterranean vault compartments that were designated for backup computer and life support systems will now be renovated for senior vault personnel leisure facilities the committee has a construction agenda that must be finalized by mid-march the new facility options are as follows several top quality restaurants with ten thousand square feet of cold storage seven smoke rooms with piano bars and two subterranean hunting grounds stocked with rare animals purchased from world-renowned zoos all of these are feasible but to require an additional 12.4 billion dollars which can be acquired by which can be acquired by which can be acquired by whomever it was putting together this network of vaults apparently didn't really take the threat of global nuclear annihilation seriously they defunded the program taking a lot of that money to reward members of this council to build for themselves leisure facilities the problem with this argument is when we do finally make it to vault zero while exploring the calculator's lair we find pre-war vault-tec marketing posters on the wall on the side of the elevator that we use to get to the calculator's layer we find this very famous image which was used by valttec an image we've seen in many of the fallouts published since an image we first saw in fallout 1. this is vault-tec marketing propaganda and we find it in vault zero this has to mean that vault zero is a vault-tec vault so therefore fallout tactics gets vault-tec lore wrong another thing that they kind of get wrong is super mutant lore now on one hand they do make many references to the master on at least two occasions we find super mutants that directly reference the master why is it so bright i hope it's not that damn robot again master thanks pal maybe the master was wrong we know from fallout 1 that fev the forced evolutionary virus was used by pre-war america's government to experiment on first animals and then people it was use of this virus fev on people that so enraged roger maxson causing him to form the brotherhood of steel it was decades later that richard gray discovered fev admiral posa got infected by it and became the master he then manipulated fev changing it to create his super mutant army that he communicated with and controlled telepathically with the death of the master at the end of fallout 1 this telepathic link was severed which caused a great super mutant migration some of them went north many of them went east which makes sense why we would find super mutants in the midwest all of this so far is okay but the super mutants we find in the midwest all look very different from the ones we find on the west coast the super mutants from fallout 1 had massive lips that were held up by straps to expose their mouths so that they could speak the same is true for the mutants we find in fallout new vegas who we know were the remnants of the masters army these mutants we find in the midwest are supposed to be the remnants of the master's army and yet they all look nothing like the super mutants we find in fallout 1. instead well they kind of look melted really many of them have recognizably human faces their heads are just larger and they've got these skin flaps kind of connecting their shoulders to their head their necks are mostly gone but what's most confusing is that many of the super mutants we actually meet in the midwest are intelligent we even find a super mutant scientist ah who are you and why are you here oh dear your brotherhood please don't destroy my research this isn't an isolated character tokamata the super mutant that apprehended barnachy was well spoken this one's a general by his markings keep this one alive and bring him to my inner sanctum joe grimm also fairly well spoken look my brother jim stepped on a mind and wrecked his foot i know humans and super mutants are supposed to kill each other on sight but i think it's time to leave the past in the past though to be fair his brother jim was not though many of the other super mutants we find speak in floating flavor dialogue that use complete sentences they're aggressive they're threatening sure but they're articulate the problem with this is a major plot point to fallout 1 the vast majority of the super mutants in the master's army were really stupid incapable of higher you reasoning look like ghoul how come that was snazzy like huh you not ghoul i knew i knew not for harry you're not ghoul or to say not ghoul not be here oh huh okay have nice day good for basic combat only and that's because the master made many of his super mutants using post-apocalyptic human stock he would find or apprehend people born into the wasteland after the nuclear event of 2077 that created the wasteland and dunk them in vats of fev this produced super mutants that were intellectually inferior the fev was mutated by the war radiation those living in this desolate wasteland have been exposed to this mutant fev essentially inoculating them from the full effects so you need those who are uncontaminated in order to make super mutants oh my you are brighter than i thought now you know why we need your vault however when the master dunked a person into a vat of fev who was never exposed to the radiation from the apocalypse like a vault dweller he could create a super mutant with higher reasoning he called these rare humans primes you're a prime normal i can't have a perfectly good prime normal and not make it one of the chosen ones now can i after you tell me where your vault is i will conquer it and turn all those pure strain humans into mutants they will give me the army i need to bring peace to the entire wasteland and this was the entire reason that the master wanted the vault dwellers of vault 13. vault 13 was a control vault filled with people who had never been exposed to post-apocalyptic radiation it was filled with primes primes he could then turn into intelligent super mutants but he never got the people of vault 13 the vault dweller saw to that by defeating him at the end of fallout 1. so he was never able to make an army of intelligent reasonable super mutants now there were the few rare instances when a super mutant came out of the vat intelligent the lieutenant is one example fate luck of the draw i was the strongest of my batch to be dipped in the virus marcus is another example we should have only taken the best look around most mutants didn't have the mind or will to withstand the strain if only we had chosen better but they're very rare except for in the midwest in the midwest we find all of these eloquent intelligent super mutants one could try to argue that the mutants we find in the midwest are different mutants not associated with the ones from the west coast but the lore clearly tries to make that connection the mutants themselves reference the master time and time again the cut scenes talk about the mutant exodus from the west coast it is possible that the mutant horde discovered the location of vault zero during their exodus from the west one of the super mutant only traits available in the game is called that skin which only super mutants can get because only super mutants had been dipped in vats by the master we even find a super mutant scientist at jefferson trying to cure the super mutant's sterility problem a problem that had huge plot significance in the events of fallout 1. preposterous the fev2 virus doesn't destroy the reproductive organs of those it mutates presently there is a slight problem in the reproductive process it's being attended to for now we must use the vats to turn humans into super mutants are you sure what about the other females it cannot be we're so close to a cure so close what would the brotherhood gain by destroying this research the research towards the problem of mutant sterility could have proven to be a strong bargaining chip in our dealings with the mutant army so these are supposed to be the same super mutants and yet in fallout tactics they're depicted very differently one might even say inaccurately another thing that complicates super mutant lauren fallon tactics is time and time again we find vials of muti muti is a chem designed to give humans abilities resembling those of a super mutant but this is really weird because we know that super mutant abilities come from fev and uncurable virus if muti was filled with fev which they're injecting and incidentally you become a super mutant by being dunked in it not being injected by it then this fev would turn you into a super mutant permanently but this cam has a temporary effect so these vowels can't be filled with fev but then where did this chem come from if it's a pre-war kim how can it grant people the abilities and the characteristics of a super mutant army that wouldn't be created until over a hundred years after the apocalypse by a psycher named the master but super mutants aren't the only creature that fallout tactics gets wrong it gets the death claw wrong we learn from talking with joseph the doctor at vault 13 and from the official fallout 2 strategy guide that death clause mutated from the jackson's chameleon a lizard and that's why deathclaws and fallout 1 fallout 2 and all other fallout games except for tactics are depicted as giant reptilian creatures almost always with horns huge teeth giant claws but the deathclaws we find in fallout tactics are mammalian they're covered in hair it is strange time though my young fighting with you and the rest of the soft hairless ones the in-game description of one of our potential deathclaw squadmates mother describes her as being big hairy and scary she describes her children as pups a term which is primarily used for dogs and other canines though it can be used for seals and sharks mice rats and pigs but never lizards the deathclaws howl like wolves when going into battle one of the deathclaw only traits is rabid but only mammals can go rabid one of the female deathclaws describes herself as being in heat and only mammals can be in heat being adidas when estrogen is being produced within the ovary it's when ovulation occurs in a mammal another issue is power armor fallout 1 introduced us to the t-51b fallout 2 introduced us to the advanced power armor or the enclave suit of power armor the origins of these suits of power armor are either explained or easy to deduce the t-51b was used by america's military during the great war and was instrumental in america's success during operation anchorage it therefore makes sense that the brotherhood of steel we find in fallout 1 which was made from the remnants of america's pre-war military was wearing power armor that had been issued to america's pre-war military the enclave power armor is designed and produced by the enclave after the apocalypse this isn't actually set in the game instead we learn it from the fallout bible published by chris avalon but it makes sense that the enclave with all of their resources would be able to do something like this the midwestern brotherhood's armor is very different from all of these suits of power armor it looks nothing like the t-51b it has a familial resemblance to the enclaves advanced power armor but even then it's pretty distinct it almost has an alien's vibe going on as if it was designed by h.r geiger its existence in the universe why it's used by the brotherhood and why it's so different from every suit of power armor we've seen so far isn't explained in the game this is a bit of a problem because the brotherhood in the midwest when we join them is not quite as established and successful as the brotherhood on the west coast it's certainly nowhere near as powerful as the enclave on the west coast the midwest brotherhood when we joined them is just fighting a bunch of local raiders they become more powerful over the course of the game but we find brotherhood soldiers using this unique suit of power armor even at the very beginning of the game and when we find the brotherhood during the events of fallout 2 which takes place after the events of fallout tactics we find them still using the t-51b if this midwestern power armor is not pre-war which it can't be and wasn't designed and created by the enclave which it can't be the only other option is that the brotherhood itself created this unique form of power armor which i think is outside the realm of possibility for a group of brotherhood soldiers that crash landed here in a zeppelin had a lot of their people killed and technology lost and has been struggling to rebuild for the past several decades now the fallout tactics power armor looks admittedly pretty cool it even comes with a cape but it doesn't fit very well in the post-apocalyptic vibe of the fallout universe and this was actually addressed by the producer of fallout tactics tony oakton in a 2001 interview with the website freelancer when asked if there was anything that he would change he said i would redo the sprite of the power armor to make it more retro not that there's anything technically wrong with the sprite it's a great piece of art it's just that it's a bit out of place in the fallout universe but bear in mind that we had to design it over a year ago and interplay approved everything we did another issue is vehicles now vehicles are a unique selling point for fallout tactics they give us a great number of cool vehicles to drive around in the game though how useful they are is a matter of debate but the fact that we have all of these vehicles is a bit of a lore problem we spend the entirety of fallout 1 walking on foot we never find a vehicle we spend the majority of fallout 2 walking on foot however we do eventually find a working car and yet we go to an enormous amount of effort to get the car working we have to find an assortment of spare parts then we gotta pay a skilled mechanic to put the thing back together again and when he finally gets it working we learned that this car the highwayman runs on nuclear power we have to stop and refuel it every now and then by using either small energy cells or microfusion cells the problem is that in fallout tactics we find vehicles everywhere and they're just sitting in the streets among town ruins a buggy a scouter a hummer even a tank just lying here in the middle of the street that we can hop right into and after a few quick repairs with a tool kit we can drive we never have to refuel any of these vehicles which makes us wonder exactly what kind of fuel do they use were all of these vehicles nuclear powered like the highwayman well probably not we learn from the floating dialogue of the mechanic inside bunker beta that the vehicle uses oil yep burning oil all right if the vehicle is using oil it's probably also using gasoline this gives us the impression that all of the vehicles in the fallout tactics universe are fossil fuel powered the problem is that the entire reason america and china went to war to begin with was because of a fossil fuel shortage we learned from the events of fallout 2 while reading a pre-war news headline that through trickery the united states secured the world's last cache of fossil fuels this made china angry which is ultimately why they decided to invade alaska so america did have fossil fuels but it was an incredibly rare resource so rare that we probably wouldn't find it sitting in the fuel tanks of a variety of different vehicles just lying about in the post-apocalypse over 100 years after the bombs dropped the rarity of fossil fuels explains why america invested in nuclear technology using nuclear power to power their power armor to power some vehicles like the highwayman it's why nuclear power was used to power all of the vehicles in fallout 3 fallout 4 and fallout new vegas to find one vehicle let alone a fleet of vehicles and fallout tactics that burn fossil fuels and never need to be refueled apparently because gasoline is so plentiful just makes that resource far less rare in the universe which undermines one of the tent poles holding up this fictional universe now those were the major lore issues with the game but there were plenty of other reasons why many players walked away from fallout tactics feeling a little dissatisfied one of the major things was that players were thrown for a bit of a loop now that this latest fallout game was a squad-based tactical game the past two followed games had been open world rpgs we could have companions but we couldn't control them we could tackle the world map and every city and any quest whenever we wanted to that's not the case in fallout tactics the plot of fallout tactics was much more linear we couldn't discover any city whenever we wanted to no we had to unlock each town that had a plot in a specific order as the story progressed and outside of the towns we access for the story there really aren't any other towns now that's a perfectly legitimate way of making your game story but it's not what many players were expecting for a fallout game players just weren't used to such a linear fallout story and the story we got was okay but it wasn't exactly stellar and the reason for this i think is that there was so much content cut from the game the game we eventually get to play feels so much more bare bones than the game that could have been the game that was planned to be for example when we go to kansas city there was an entire section of the game cut that would have actually given us consequences for a previous game choice initially the developers intended to penalize us for not helping the ghouls at quincy by making the ghouls at kansas city abstain from combat and not help us during the fire fight take the positively charged particles of plutonius it must have been his electron sharing intervention i must divulge a secret to you about the ghoul race you must understand that acolytes like us can only join the battle when the prophecy is fulfilled you must be our defense and aid my brothers the rest of us can only watch and pray if however we would have helped the ghouls at quincy and we had one in our party the ghouls here at kansas city would have helped us what is this our brethren have joined the brotherhood us acolytes are forbidden to take up arms until the prophecy is fulfilled we were taught that acolyte ghouls are beings of light and that we will turn to smoking ash if we raise our hands in anger that is why we only watch but my brothers here are warriors who come from afar i see it before my own three eyes this means the prophecy is complete we won't turn to ash we can help defend our beliefs we will not watch we will act but they cut the acolyte and they cut this subplot instead the ghouls of kansas city help us no matter what choices we make in the game giving our big choice in quincy whether or not to help the ghouls have less consequence at osceola we find a letter from general barnacy to his wife maria initially we were supposed to be able to read this but they cut it from the game and this is a problem because the contents of this letter is really important information we need in order to make a pivotal decision at the very end of the game it's only from the transcript of this letter to his wife maria that we learn what the promise is that he gave to his wife my dearest maria although it pains me to record this i must continue time is short and my future is less than certain i'm currently captured and held prisoner by a large group of super mutants and i don't believe that i'm going to make it back this time but once again time is short and i'll use it to tell you what is important i love you maria i've loved you since we first met and i love you even more 50 years since we were always much alike you and i and know that i would never have had the courage to fight for humanity without you faithfully by my side for in the end i realize i did it all for you for i wanted nothing more but to restore order to this chaotic world so you can live a life free of danger free of fear free of ungodly mutations i'm a freedom out of time i'll make every attempt to fix this world for you my love i promise love eternal simon barney he promises to fix this world to make sure that the world is free of danger and free of ungodly mutations much later in the game when we meet barnacy in his latest incarnation we have an option to give him the power to fulfill his promise my maria would be horrified at what i have become and that is one burden i cannot bear to carry i would sacrifice my own brain my own existence to make the calculator whole and to help form a world that would make my maria proud thank you for granting me this brother just tell her tell her that i love her with all of my heart oh wait that's gone tell her i love her with all of my immortal soul and please tell her i did not forget my promise but without examining this cut content we don't know what that promise is and therefore we can't make an informed decision in osceola they cut all of the holotapes recorded and left by paladin latham these are the holotapes that explain how latham went from being a brotherhood of steel paladin a survivor of the exodus from the west coast to the midwest to gamoran the leader of the super mutants journal of sir latham entry 0.0.1 i am awake to tell the truth i remember little of the battle the gash on my head along with multiple fractures and breaks paint an adequate picture however the mutants are now expecting me to lead them since i laid gamoran to rest i will record more later i fear my brain has been set awry by the fight i will try to rest until i can think clearly it's a really interesting and important piece of lore that without makes us wonder exactly how a brotherhood of steel paladin came to lead super mutants the holotapes paint latham as a really disturbed guy who came to appreciate the nuances of super mutant culture journal of sir latham entry 0.5.8 the super mutants are a simple but good people while considered stupid by many they show a loyalty stronger than i've seen in many humans they live life the only way they know how i've begun to organize these mutant forces with a handful of fellow humans who survived the crash i have recovered physically but i find myself prone to mysterious fits of anger and depression but much worse are the hallucinations who was struggling with ptsd journal of sarlatham entry 2.3.4 i am not well this morning i thought i was attacked by a deathclaw too far from my smg i lashed out with my ripper slashing the beast's throat my vision cleared in time to see nathan the scribes eyes go cloudy his neck in ruin his blood covering my hands how can i go mad when humanity is in such dire peril i must maintain my sanity i must and couldn't control his violence it makes him a much more interesting character than the one we ultimately meet in the game when we find latham we have one brief conversation with him welcome brothers welcome what a fine bunch of soldiers i see before me if only the west coast elders could see you they would finally agree with us about sharing the brotherhood's wealth of education and technology but i digress do you believe you can stop the menace from the west your eyes give you away brother they tell me you don't even understand who or what the menace is the elders have always been blind to what is not in front of them but it ends here the general is not here for you to save i'm afraid and you cannot save me or yourself now show me what you've learned where he challenges us to a fight and then we kill him then there's the cut terminal at buena vista had we been able to access this terminal we would have learned that vault zero came with an emergency pacification protocol our lands are filled with foreign soldiers dangerous mutations or breach of the vault's defenses the calculator will initiate the emergency pacification protocol this will trigger the starting sequence for the pacification systems and the operations or we could choose mutations to be targeted first to ensure human dna will not be at risk of contamination our goal of surviving pure blood human or otherwise sometime after the robots have pacified the surrounding area construction of the helion will begin once assembled the helium will increase vault zero's pacification range to five times the previous distance it is built for vertical takeoff and can reach air speeds in excess of 400 miles per hour the armory includes five anti-tank bombs eight surface-to-air missiles and dual 60 millimeter cannons the helion uses standard issue jp5 fuel and can fly for eight hours or longer than you will ever have to after the bombs if the computers in vault zero detect a hostile force or corrupted human dna they begin to pacify the wasteland this is an incredibly important terminal because it tells us the calculator's motive but with this terminal entry cut the calculator just wants to kill all humans because well they're just humans and there were numerous instances of cut content in the game like that that just added so much more color and light to the game and made it much more interesting then there are minor little narrative quibbles here and there that just didn't make sense and bothered me for example on rock falls we find a scientist who wants to join the brotherhood are you from the brotherhood of steel oh thank goodness you're here my name's dyson i was on the way to your base to offer my services when i was apprehended but he gets apprehended by raiders before he can make it to the brotherhood the problem is that the reason they apprehended him is because they saw that he was a brotherhood scribe once i told him i was a scribe i was separated from the others and brought here to study this device freeing the captured scribe was a wise decision his knowledge of the device will be useful which of course doesn't make sense you can't be a brotherhood scribe until you joined the brotherhood but this guy who was on his way too joined the brotherhood was apprehended because he was a scribe that doesn't work then in macomb we find a guy who wants us to find his glasses i escaped without harm but i lost my glasses during the chase if you can find them i would be most grateful but then when we find the glasses the first thing he does is check the prescription you're back oh you brought glasses for me let's see if the prescription is close hmm just about perfect well if they were his glasses he would know the prescription was his why then in rock falls we stumble upon a raider who has turned into a brotherhood of steel informant keep it quiet and i'll tell you what i know and then later we find him in a brotherhood bunker with a completely different character portrait ah that was too close i thought i was gonna have to cap your ass since you almost blew my cover even accounting for a different outfit these guys aren't the same guy then there's an interesting one when we first meet the merchant kerr he talks to us and we hear something strange in the background hello my child i am cur a humble merchant who travels the wastelands in search of objects and oddities that the brotherhood could use come and have a look at my wares who knows maybe i'll have something you might find useful it sounds like he's in a hospital but this doesn't make any sense to us because he's not in a hospital he's in a brotherhood of steel bunker but of course much later in the game we discovered him at scott city and he had been dissected cut up torn to pieces plugged into a bunch of life support machinery i'm surprised you made it here without being shackled warrior now we know why we hear the machines in the background but it doesn't make sense to hear them all the way at the beginning of the game when we first meet him then in peoria we discover a pre-war military installation underground but in one of the hallways of this bunker we find a couple of vault zero citizen corpses there are a couple of things wrong with this first of all the vault zero citizens here are wearing the traditional blue and yellow jumpsuits but when we actually get to vault zero the citizens are all wearing white jumpsuits secondly how could a vault zero citizen even be here we learned much later in the game that the citizens of vault zero suffered brain damage this is third scientist lewis things are going from bad to worse we should have installed more backup systems for the calculator the irony is that the committee members that voted on vault zero's backup system budget cuts are now all dead but it gets worse 63 percent of vault zero's population is now dead while 15 percent of the living are now severely brain damaged and can no longer care for themselves which we see on full display when we actually get there not to mention the fact that they're all being held captive by the calculator in the bowels of this vault 63 died 15 percent were left brain damaged that leaves 22 percent of the vault citizens left who presumably could still function we don't find any of them in vault zero the only ones left are brain damaged where did they all go if they got out of the vault how it was locked down by the calculator we had to blow the door off with a nuke to get in and if they did escape how did they get all the way east to peoria and why the bunker in peoria was filled with radiation there wasn't really anything there that they needed to get we went there for fusion batteries why did these vault zero citizens go there it's never explained and again in peoria in this underground pre-war bunker on a work table we find a micro sledge but the description tells us that this micro sledge was actually invented and manufactured by the brotherhood of steel but we found it in a pre-war bunker that hasn't been accessed since the bombs dropped due to all of the rad roaches and radiation so how could this be here and we also find one in vault zero that's right designed and manufactured by the brotherhood of steel but we find one in a vault run by the boss of the game the calculator that hasn't been opened since before the bombs dropped it's like the whole finding jet in pre-war containers thing all over again then also in peoria we find a locker filled with yellow nuka-cola however when examining it we'll learn that this yellow nuka-cola is not actually manufactured by nuka-cola it was self-produced by the crazy naked man and the flavor has an interesting bouquet of course we find this crazy naked man at osceola it's none other than roshambo the old brotherhood of steel survivor from the zeppelin crash and on his body is of course the same flavor of nuka-cola presumably it's rochambeau himself who is the crazy naked man and who is the one producing this flavor of nuka-cola why then do we find a bottle of rochambeau's urine in an underground pre-war military facility then in saint louis we come to rescue paladin solo and when we do general decker says this paladin solo and her troops are now inside the apc drive them back to the evac point we saved her and her troops but paladin solo sounds like this it's about time some backup got here paladin solo commander of talon squad it's not pretty here brother they're dropping bombs like it's the great war [Laughter] and it's not even just here in st louis when we meet her at a previous brotherhood bunker she sounds like this name solo i'm in charge of talon squad which is used for quick armed response it's easy duty until you're called into action and then it's time to rock tell me brother what's better than this maybe this was intentional i'll leave this one up too do you think it was a mistake or was it intentional then there's harold now of course there could be a number of people in the universe named harold not every herald we're going to find is the herald from fallout 1 but his description combined with his appearance makes this a bit too coincidental in the recruits pool we find a ghoul named harold he's 124 years old he has a tree growing out of his head we not only see it in the character portrait but harold here has a unique perk that only he can have called bonsai through careful nurturing he has a small fruit tree growing out of his head and he has the way of the fruit perk which gives him a bonus to eating fruit now we first met harold in fallout 1 he wasn't a ghoul though even though he looked like one he's actually a mutant he was infected with fev like the master only it affected him very differently i got mutated sure wasn't born this ugly happened when we tried to find out where all the mutants were coming from we made it to some sort of central core like a plant of some sort that's when it happened a robot crane crashed into us last i saw gray he was flying through the air and into some sort of acid bath i was in bad shape and well i passed out ghouls on the other hand are produced by extreme exposure to radiation so he might look a little bit like a ghoul but he's not a ghoul in fallout 2 we find harold again and here he's championing the plight of the ghouls again even though he's not one but maybe he's just got a soft spot for ghouls because he looks like one whatever i'll let that one slide but here in fallout 2 we clearly begin to see the tree we not only see it but he talks about the tree growing out of his head jealous his name's herbert i talk to him when i get lonely just kidding his name's bob who the problem is that follow tactics takes place between the events of fallout 1 and fallout 2 and in a completely different region on the map so in order for this herald in fallout tactics to be that herald from fallout 1 and that herald from fallout 2 he first would have had to have survived the events of fallout 1 and then for some reason gone on a trip to the midwest where upon several decades later he decides to become a brotherhood of steel soldier presumably after witnessing the warrior's kindness at quincy but then after the events of fallout tactics he abandons his life in the midwest to go all the way back to the west coast so that the chosen one can stumble upon him during the events of fallout 2. possible totally within the realm of possibility likely i don't know that's an awful lot of walking for a guy to do who incidentally then after the events of fallout 2 walks all the way across the continental united states to the east coast where we meet him in fallout 3. another thing that's confusing about this is some cut content we got from kansas city apparently by the events of fallout tactics harold from fallout 1 is almost a prophetic creature this is cut content but at kansas city we were supposed to find a prophecy which was supposed to explain why the ghouls of kansas city were not supposed to help the warrior fight off the mutants and this prophecy was written by saint herald of the leafy scalp that is this a third herald or is it the fallout one herald or the fallout tactics herald we don't know they just really like the name harold another problem with kansas city is that before we even get there general decker tells us that the place is flooded with radiation and that we should take a bunch of radix we will send repo squad to collect the nuke when the bishop consents the quartermaster will supply you with some rad x and right away we advise you to monitor your radiation levels at regular intervals dismiss and indeed when we get there and we find the nuclear warhead inside the town surrounded by ghouls bishop defcon the leader of these schools also warns us about the radiation and gives us red x take these for his power is harmful to mere humans but the nuclear warhead here does not emit radiation we can stand here as long as we want and we don't get irradiated then there's the deathclaw squadmate we can recruit called mother her character description almost makes her sound like she's the same deathclaw matriarch we rescued from mardin in fact she has the exact same portrait however the character models look different the matriarch from marden had a grayish white coat however this one as we can see in the sprite preview is light brown but to complicate this even more much later when we move to a new bunker we find the matriarch from marden running around the bunker in heat but we find her running around this bunker even if we have mother the squad mate actively in our party so i'm just all sorts of confused here who exactly is mother i don't know then in osceola which is supposed to be in missouri we find a bunch of cacti and these aren't just small cacti no these are seguro cacti which only grow naturally in arizona mexico and california not missouri but i don't know maybe the magic of radiation changed that admittedly many of those were just sort of minor quibbles nothing like the huge lore mistakes the game makes the greater frustrations players have with fallout tactics are due to gameplay follow tactics is incredibly ambitious it took a turn-based isometric game and tried to give it real-time multi-layered gameplay and often times it works but many times it doesn't pathing in particular is unpredictable and really frustrating in the game particularly when multiple layers of the map are considered here for example at the very beginning of the game in brahmin wood i want my characters to go into this little room the only obstacles in the middle of this room are barrels i click a few hexes to the left and my character walks all the way outside goes all the way around the building and tries to attack this guy through a wall characters can often times get stuck on stairs they can't figure out how to get all the way up clicking on a top floor tile will sometimes send the characters to a bottom floor tile there are doorways and gaps through walls that we should be able to go through they're no smaller than some of the others that we can pass through sometimes while trying to navigate to a different layer characters will completely ignore wall boundaries like here where i'm trying to send my squad upstairs but they just walk through this gate bottom layers have a tendency to not appear even though i know a staircase is here and i'm trying to go down it takes multiple attempts before i can actually see it or here where i finally go down a staircase only for all of my characters not just my deathclaw to get stuck in the doorway and i have to crouch them down or wiggle them around just to get by we're here where we find a rubble ramp leading to a subterranean passage that we can go down but no matter what we do we can't get back up we're here where we find a staircase that is not blocked in any way but is completely inaccessible or here in newton where i saw a work bench that i could loot while on the third floor of the building but in order to find it i had to climb a staircase down to the second floor then take a ladder down all the way to the basement level until i finally found the workbench having the option to do turn-based and real-time is a great choice but it had some unforeseen consequences for example in peoria we find these two machine gun tourettes that are pretty hard to get by they can kill most of our characters in real time mode but to get by them all we have to do is turn on turn based combat while the turrets are underground then we just walk by them for some reason these turrets never come above ground during their turn making it possible to just cheese through what was supposed to be a very challenging fight then there are issues with gameplay flow the way certain missions are constructed so that we understand the story and we understand our objective the pace at which we acquire more powerful gear to help against more powerful enemies the viability of certain pieces of gear that we do get the viability of certain skills we have squad mates we can get some of them just don't feel fleshed out compared to other options in the game there are plenty of guns but so many of them are so bad or given to us at the wrong level and we end up using a small selection of guns for most of our characters during the entire gameplay for example in brahminwood we find an extremely rare weapon a spear gun it's the only one in the game the only ammunition we ever find for it is the ammunition we find on the body of the guy who was carrying it we can never stock up on any more ammunition from any of the brotherhood quartermasters or any other merchants in the game and it never drops on any other corpses and even on the very first level it sucks compared to the hunting rifle and the other small guns that we get on the very first level in quincy and also in a random encounter we find a wasp sting which was supposed to be a melee pierce weapon but the weapon is broken and it doesn't work when we equip it in saint louis we find the xl70 e3 einfield sniper rifle the only one in the entire game but it's way inferior to the regular sniper rifle that we've had for several missions by this point it's inferior both in terms of damage and in terms of range this sniper rifle has worse range than some of the pistols we have access to its only upside is its greater magazine capacity but then again it uses a much more rare and more expensive ammunition type there's just no point to this weapon even being here then there's the browning auto rifle a big gun that doesn't drop in the game until cold water one of the last missions in the game but by the time we get it it is far inferior to every other big gun we have in the game in kansas city this entire mission would make so much more sense if we first talk to defcon to learn a little bit about the ghouls here and what they need from us before the mutants swarm the town however the mutants start their attacks so quickly that we don't have time to go and talk to defcon first so basically before defcon can give us a quest to defend his town from the mutants we already killed all the mutants so that by the time we finally talk to defcon we've missed most of his dialogue which his subsequent dialogue assumes we've heard making the dialogue we get access to confusing then there's the science skill throughout the entire game we keep finding these big books of science over and over again every other mission a big book of science here a big book of science there but never any opportunity to use the science skill our first opportunity to use the science skill is in buena vista one of the last missions in the entire game and there we use it once then at vault zero we have to use the science skill ten times we can't get through the vault without it these are the only two missions that require the science skill if they were gonna have the science skill in the game and give us all of these skill books and if i was going to make a character that i'm role playing as a scientist and i'm investing in the science skill i'm going to want more opportunities to use that skill than the last few missions of the game i mean halfway through my game play i might think that the science skill had been abandoned and i'll stop working on science for that character because i never have an opportunity to use it only to be very surprised at the end of the game many players complained about the limited role vehicles had in the game and that's a complaint i share for all the hype about finally being able to use these vehicles in the game despite the fact that being able to use gasoline-powered vehicles in the fallout universe is a bit of a lore problem the vehicles we ultimately get are rather inconsequential we even get a really cool tank that has a unique form of ammunition that we theoretically could use in combat but we never get an opportunity to do so outside random encounters the vast majority of the missions don't allow us to use vehicles making vehicles nothing more than glorified backpacks where we can store all our junk i still really enjoyed the idea of having access to a fleet of vehicles even though i wish it had been executed better the game lacks balance it lacks a lot of polish there were a lot of great ideas that went into the game but so many of them were poorly executed melee and unarmed damage for example are supposed to be important options in this game but i found them to be utterly and completely useless in real time mode melee characters don't race towards an enemy squad mates with long range weapons will shoot at any enemy based on their stance but for melee and unarmed characters even if you have them on the aggressive stance they could be being shot at by a guy just a few hexes away but they won't attack unless you physically move them closer making melee and unarmed damage useless outside of turn-based mode even then melee and unarmed damage becomes useless much later in the game when fighting raiders and lightly armored enemies towards the beginning of the game it can be pretty useful but when you get highly armored super mutants and then robots towards the end of the game melee and unarmed damage can't pierce armor even the power fist one of the best unarmed weapons in the game which we can get pretty early on in the game just can't compete against super mutant armor or robotic armor much later in the game this is a problem with recruiting death claws into the party deathclaws can't use ranged weapons well aside from thrown weapons but their one great positive characteristic is their high strength in their huge unarmed skill but later in the game when fighting super mutants and robots they're practically useless making an entire race that we have access to a complete waste of time since many of the enemies that we fight are using ranged weapons having even one character on our squad specializing in either unarmed or melee is gonna essentially put him out of the combat for most of the missions in the game to make melee and unarmed damage viable they should have provided us with melee and unarmed weapons that excelled at piercing high armor but they don't the one exception is the punch gun which takes shotgun ammunition to function so we could use armor-piercing shells for it but it only does between 10 and 20 damage compared to the 15 and 25 damage of the neostad combat shotgun or the 20-32 damage of the pankar jackhammer even the pump action shotgun which we get really early in the game has the capability of doing up to 24 damage making the punch gun an inferior choice compared to the other weapons in the game that use the same ammunition this makes both unarmed and melee combat options pretty poorly executed and then there are the glitches things that just straight up don't work the way they're supposed to harold for example turns white halfway through the game by the time we get to jefferson he's just white and it's not just me it's not some weird fluke that i had i read many reports of people having the exact same issue and only with harold there's even a patch out there that purports to fix it then in saint louis there's the case of the invisible mines on a ramp leading up to the super mutant stronghold this isn't an issue with the trap skill harold here had high traps and had been able to see and disarm all of the traps on the map but here and only here all of the traps are invisible but to make matters worse we can't detonate these traps in any other way than by walking over them not by throwing grenades not by using burst damage it's stuff like this that just infuriates some players there are many items that just aren't finished these papers have no description this clipboard has no description this briefcase that is important a pivotal part of the plot has no description the recruitable character pip boy has no description this robot head a quest item no description then we've got two squad mates who share the exact same character portrait keiza a character we don't get access to until junction city has the same portrait as farsight a character we get in our squad at the very beginning of the game and there are some quests that just don't work in cold water when we save simon dudley's sister he offers us a reward i want you to have these as payment that's all we have and i won't take no for an answer but he doesn't give us anything also in cold water when we assassinate ma baker for don vincenzo he also offers us a reward you have done me a valuable service please take your reward from me to you huh but he doesn't give us anything during the newton mission we can recruit some mpcs to temporarily join our party but when they do if we have a full party already they take up one of the tabs which pushes out one of our party members the only way to access that party member's inventory is to manually click on his sprite there are weapons that don't have sound effects characters that are supposed to have voice dialogue but don't even entire scripted storyline based events that are supposed to have sound effects that don't there's the foot locker in a secret room in scott city that we're supposed to be able to pick but we can't one of the lockers in the hidden room towards the end of vault zero that we're supposed to be able to pick but we can't then there's the awful problem of being able to sometimes just shoot straight through walls here's an example of rock falls now there are some walls where you can shoot through them and it makes sense for you to be able to do so walls that have big cracks in them walls that have windows in them but here i'm looking at a solid metal wall the door is closed there are no windows and yet i'm attacking a dog same with here rock falls the walls are all boarded up and yet this guy is shooting through them here's a problem of a guy on the bottom level of a nearby building shooting right through the walls of the building and then here in peoria we haven't found the staircase to the underground military facility yet and yet we can still see and shoot at the red roaches underground and then when we finally get underground they can shoot poison at us through walls fallout tactics was a rushed game they didn't have a long time to playtest it so that the game we got had so many unbalanced sections bad organization unfinished content that had to be cut and straight up glitches these problems became barriers to entry for many players which is a bummer because i actually really liked this game despite the glitches despite how wonky it can sometimes be i enjoyed the squad-based mechanics i relished being able to sit down and think out each character in my squad and optimize their gear and their stance despite how linear it was it was still fun i enjoyed it i just wish there had been more of it but what are your thoughts on fallout tactics now that you've seen the story and experienced all of its problems is it irredeemable or did you think that it was worth your time let me know your thoughts in the comment section below i publish many fallout videos each and every week on my channel so if you don't want to miss my next episode be sure to subscribe and to click that bell notification button if you have but you still feel like you're missing out on youtube notifications consider following me on twitter at oxhorn i update twitter manually with every new piece of content that i publish i've got two new shirts in the shop mine's mine's mines and who wants a cookie my designs are completely unique you can't get them anywhere else they come on shirts in a variety of men's women's and children's sizes and in a wide array of colors you can find them on other products as well like smartphone cases pillows mugs stickers etc so if interested you can find a link to my shop in the description below or you can click here if you like what i do and you want to support me in a more personal way consider becoming a patron on patreon or a member here on youtube youtube members and patrons on patreon gain access to a private channel on my discord server and youtube members gain access to ox emojis that they can use during the live chats of my live streams and in the comment sections of my videos they also get little badges that appear next to their names in the comment sections of my videos but more than anything i'm just so glad you're here watching this video with me today thank you so much for watching and i'll see you soon with more brand new videos you

Channel: Oxhorn

Views: 200,667

Keywords: oxhorn, fallout tactics

Id: UD17UKBd6SY

Length: 71min 47sec (4307 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 12 2021