Mar 31, 2013

Mod of the Week: Simple Realism for Fallout 3

Fallout 3

I'm always excited to start a new game of Fallout 3. The early stages are my favorite: those wonderfully scrappy first few levels where every bottle cap is a fortune, every trashcan a treasure chest. This time around I'm looking for more of a challenge, something to make the early days of my new character, Kurt, even scrappier than usual, but I'm a little daunted by some of the more popular rebalancing mods. Many of them completely overhaul every single element of the game. I'm just looking for something simple.

A mod called Simple Realism sounds about right. It doesn't reshape the entire game, it just juices some of the behind-the-scenes math relating to weapons, damage, health, and loot. Perfect.

By now you know how Fallout 3 starts, so let's just fast-forward: I'm a baby, I'm at my birthday party, I'm shooting my dad in the butt with my BB gun, I'm bribing my way out of taking the G.O.A.T. test, Butch's head falls off because I'm doing something violent to it, yadda yadda yadda, I've escaped the Vault. Hooray!

Pew pew! That's for abandoning me seven years from now, Dad! Pew pew!

Now, I'm preparing to heal the various injuries I sustained during my escape. I've got a couple bullet wounds from guards, a few roach bites from saving Butch's Corpse's mother, and my shoulders are probably a little sore from frenziedly beating the Overseer to death with a baseball bat in front of his daughter. Injecting myself with a stimpak, I get to see one of the changes of Simple Realism: my health slowly increases for a few seconds before the injection wears off. There will be no more bringing up my Pip-Boy, injecting myself while the game is paused, and instantaneously recovering health. Health is now recovered slowly, and in real-time, and each stimpack only lasts a few seconds.

I head to Megaton, taking a brief moment to stand ankle-deep in the puddle formed by the town's giant unexploded atom bomb. In just a few seconds I've gotten radiation poisoning, which is another feature of the mod: irradiated water is immediately and incredibly hazardous. Why the noisy lunatic praying to the bomb hasn't dropped dead yet, I don't know. I guess he hasn't installed the mod. After selling Moira my collection of Vault jumpsuits, I head back out into the wastes to start some trouble. The Springvale School is nearby and full of raiders, a good place to see how combat has been tweaked.

Realism has been tweaked, but surrealism is still intact.

Weapon damage has been increased, and shooting someone in the head tends to kill them pretty darn quickly. This definitely smacks of realism, but after creeping through the building and popping raiders in their domes, it seems like it might actually be making the game easier instead of harder. Most of them never even manage to get a shot off at me.

Then I step outside and ow ow OW. A raider on a ledge spots me, opens fire, and immediately almost all of my health is gone. Not only do my weapons do more damage to NPCs, but their weapons do more damage to me, which sounds perfectly fair but doesn't really feel fair at this particular moment. I hunch behind some cover, inject a stimpak, and anxiously wait, bullets zinging by my head, as my health slowly creeps back up to tolerable levels. Crouching there as I slowly heal, wondering if the raider will charge me in the meantime, is pretty tense. I actually like this stimpak change a lot.

After I finish off the remaining raiders, I head to a nearby overpass and find a few more. I take several of them down, then spot another in the distance. He notices me as well. I also notice he has a sniper rifle. Then I notice I'm dead. Hey man, nice shot. I reload the game, and this time he misses me with his shot but hits the ruined car I'm hiding behind. It explodes. So do I. I'm dead again.

Oh yeah. Cars explode pretty seriously in this game. I'd forgotten.

On my third or fourth try, I finally manage to drop him with a lucky, long distance pistol shot. I kill the remaining raiders, and I'm excited to find one of them was carrying a flame-thrower. Excellent! I might get to try another feature of this mod shortly: when NPCs are set on fire, they panic and run away, which sounds like some pretty darn realistic behavior.

Since I'm out of stimpaks (the mod makes the chances of finding them in stashes quite unlikely) and low on health, I slowly limp back to Megaton (the effects of crippled limbs has been enhanced) and head to the clinic. With stimpaks appearing less frequently in the world, they're more valuable, and thus more expensive, costing 200 caps each. Oddly, the doctor offers to heal me completely for just 100, which should probably be increased. Even more oddly, he doesn't notice as I rob the clinic of every stimpack I can find. You'd think a ragged maniac with a giant fuel tank strapped to his back crouch-walking around the office might make the doctor a little suspicious. I guess the mod doesn't do anything to make stealth more realistic.

Ignore me, my odd scuttling, and the opening and closing sounds you're about to hear. Thanks.

After selling my collection of refuse to Moira again, I head back out to set some things on fire. A molerat attacks me, I flame him, and sure enough, he flees in a trail of smoke. More molerats approach and it just takes a toot from my flamer to send them sprinting away. Cool!

Come back, coward, so I may sear thee once more!

I'm keen to see if this works humans, but before I can find one, I stumble upon a Mr. Gutsy robot who is ironically using his own flamethrower to scatter a pack of dogs. Mr. Gutsy, on the other hand, doesn't flee when I set him on fire. I guess robots don't fear the flames the way organic life does. Makes sense.

How about a little fire, Tin Man?

Rather than trying to burn me back, Mr. Gutsy shoots me with a plasma bolt, which strikes my flame-thrower, instantly breaking it. "My new toy! Nooooo! You'll pay for this, Mr. Gutsy!" is a thing I want to shout but I'm dead roughly a millisecond later from Mr. Gutsy's second plasma bolt.

By the way, another thing the mod does is to slow down level progression. For instance, Kurt advanced to Level 2 after escaping the Vault, and currently, Kurt's dead body is still Level 2, whereas in the un-modded game, he'd probably have earned enough XP by now to be closing in on Level 4, and thus perhaps would have survived Mr. Gutsy. Sorry, Kurt! You're probably not enjoying this mod, but I definitely am.

Installation: Simple Realism is also simple to install, but there are different installation methods depending on if you have the Mothership Zeta and Broken Steel DLC. Note: you don't need the DLC for Simple Realism, but the installation method is different if you do have it. Rather than try to sum up the various install options, I'm just going to sternly insist you view the Read Me files in the download folders.

Mar 19, 2013

The Elder Scrolls Online: What I loved and what I didn’t as a long-time Elder Scrolls fan

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion® Game of the Year Edition (2009)

If I had to pick a handful of gaming moments that will stay with me forever, three of them would be stepping into Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim for the first time. Another would be my first few days in World of Warcraft. At face value, combining Elder Scrolls with an MMO should lead to instant RPG nirvana. But the reality of the situation is much different.

Elder Scrolls Online is being created in an era of acute MMO fatigue. An era in which gamers who put off term papers to work the slot machine of mostly-samey content direction look to any new entry in the genre with the suspicion and cynicism of a too-many-times-spurned romantic. (Not that I would know anything about that.)

It was with this in mind that I went hands-on with ZeniMax Online's new contender to ask the question: Is this just another MMO with an Elder Scrolls veneer? Or has the dream of a living, multiplayer Elder Scrolls world been realized?

If you're looking for a comprehensive rundown of the game's headline features, meanwhile, Chris has discussed them all in some detail in his Elder Scrolls Online hands-on preview - including the newly announced first-person mode, stealth, skills and more. You should also check out our video interview with game director Matt Firor and lead gameplay designer Nick Konkle about their experiences crafting the game.

What I loved

Elder Scrolls-style combat. ESO has been designed around a lot of the same basic ideas we're familiar with from Skyrim and Oblivion. Left mouse to attack, right mouse to block. Holding block and attacking executes a bash that can interrupt spellcasting. Arrows and spells have to be aimed with your reticle. You do have a hotbar, but it's pared down to about Guild Wars 2-size, and the devs have clearly stated that they don't want you worrying about it too much in combat. You also won't be forced into Tank/Healer/DPS roles. Adhering to said roles will help players manage the game's hardest enemies, according to the devs. However, they're looking to maximize the variety of builds that are viable against such challenges.

This isn't to say that it feels exactly like Skyrim or Oblivion... but we'll get into that on the next page.

You can build your character however you want, and skills level up as you use them. You do get a token choice of "classes" (which are kind of boring and unnecessary, and will be discussed on the next page), but it's a choice that can be completely ignored if you choose. Your class determines three of the Skill Lines you have access to, while the others, universal across all characters, are based on weapon types, fighting styles, armor classes, and magic schools.

You have to have a certain overall character level to unlock new skills (think perks from Skyrim, or talents from other MMOs), but once unlocked, they will progress in power through repeated usage. It's not precisely the same as the way it works in Skyrim, but if you, say, hit level 5 and unlock a two-handed cleave, that cleave skill on your hotbar will get stronger the more you use it.

The music and art style feel like Elder Scrolls. Some of the early previews we saw seemed to feature slightly goofy, overly-cartoony character models. That was not the case in the build I played (though it could be an issue of starter armor looking more Spartan and realistic). The models seemed proportioned correctly, and the textures, characters, and architecture struck just the right balance between fantasy and gritty realism we've seen in the series' history.

The environments still suffer from "MMO gigantism," which I'm told has something to do with camera distances, though I've never really bought its necessity. Luckily, from what I saw, it's not as horrendously distracting as it was in The Old Republic.

Full voice acting, and quest choices that matter. Every quest in the game will feature voice acting, and from what was shown, it mostly rates somewhere between okay and good. You'll also get to make choices in quests that affect more than an alignment meter, with recurring characters sometimes living or dying based on what you do. And unlike TOR, some of them will actually show up again if you spared their lives. We didn't get to play enough to see how far this extends, but it already seems to be more impactful than the "Take your Light/Dark Side points and never speak of this again" model that TOR used.

A promising crafting system. I could count the MMOs that have done this well on one hand, following an unfortunate table saw accident. ESO's crafting is actually one of the more potentially fun systems I've had a look at in a while. In addition to base ingredients, you'll be able to introduce additives to your creations, each of which have four random properties (like Skyrim's alchemy ingredients). It encourages experimentation in a way I found entertaining.

Oh, and every armor piece and weapon that was shown in the demo can be made in one of nine racial styles, tied to the playable races of Tamriel. All crafters start off able to craft their own racial style, but can learn others.

Enemies that work together intelligently. The most unexpected thing that impressed me about ESO was the design of the enemy AI. As they move about in combat, enemies will adjust their tactics based on how many allies they have nearby, the position of those allies, and what their allies are capable of. Humanoids will call to each other, allowing you to react to their intentions. Synergies are created when rogue-types douse the ground in oil, so their mage friend can light it aflame under your feet. In a particularly extreme example, a group of necromancers sacrificed one of their own in a ritual to summon a powerful, undead bruiser.

They can't pull off the kinds of complex maneuvers a player party might, but compared to common world enemies in other MMOs, they're a few tactical steps ahead.

On the next page: What I didn't love.

Everything on the previous page has me pretty excited for Elder Scrolls Online, especially considering my level of indifference about it going in. But like a good skooma trip, the time always rolls around when you have to come down and face reality. ESO probably isn't going to be the mythical "WoW killer," nor the multiplayer game every Elder Scrolls fan has been asking for.
What I didn't like

The combat isn't quite there yet. Yes, I both loved and didn't love ESO's combat; it's one of the most important things for the game to get right. ESO has all the trappings of Skyrim's combat, but it lacks its immediacy and kinetic physicality. You feel more like you're swinging at or through opponents than actually connecting. Blocking and bashing, as well, are based on visual prompts, turning combat into more of a "hit the right buttons at the right time" exercise than Skyrim or Oblivion's gritty "keep your guard up and look for an opening."

I am willing to wait and see on this. There's still time for improvements before launch that wouldn't require a gutting of the entire system. And it's not terrible as it is: It feels about the same as Guild Wars 2, falling a bit short of Tera—the latter being the gold standard for MMO action combat, in my opinion.

Classes seem like an afterthought, and don't cover enough niches. ESO has classes. But it doesn't need them, and I don't really understand why they're there. Only four will launch with the game: Dragonknight, Sorcerer, Templar, and Nightblade. Those basically boil down to samurai, mage, paladin, and rogue. The thing is, you can already build more or less any of those character types using the universal skill lines that are independent of your class. Variety is nice, but I would have preferred the addition of more universal skill lines than these four, tacked-on, oddly-specific archetypes.

A lot of concepts are left out in the cold, since you can't just choose not to take a class. If I want want my build to be something like a Nord berserker, I can forge something along those lines with non-class skill lines. But I have to pick a class that doesn't fit my concept on top of that, leaving me with skill trees that will just sit, forever ignored, on my character sheet. I expect we'll see more classes added over time, but right now, they seem too narrow and almost vestigial.

The dungeon layouts draw from MMOs more than they do from Elder Scrolls games. The design of MMO dungeons—the ones scattered in the world, moreso than instanced content—is absolutely boring. I want to get lost in ESO's world, but in the game's cavernous, straightforward, open-layout dungeons, it would be hard for even a blind Moth Priest to get lost. Sure, the Dwemer ruins look nice. But they lack the sense of mystery, and the feeling of delving into the unknown, claustrophobic bowels of the earth that are such a hallmark of Elder Scrolls games. I want to pass through the threshold of a dungeon with the knowledge that I'll be plumbing its depths for hours, the sight of the sun becoming a fading dream as corridor after corridor of steam pipes and hostile constructs assault my hit points and my sanity.

If I had to pick one most obvious disconnect between the traditional Elder Scrolls games and Elder Scrolls Online, it's the dungeons. You can't make up for it with instanced group content, because it's impossible to have the same paranoia-filled, self-paced experiences in such areas. It's a key part of the Elder Scrolls experience, so this is a big problem.

It's zone-based. I don't think even the most optimistic people failed to see this coming, but it's still something that makes ESO feel more like an MMO than a genuine TES game. The world of Tamriel, expansive and open as it is, is divided up into level-based zones that make it difficult to explore as freely as you would in Oblivion or Skyrim. I didn't actually have the opportunity to go venturing off into the distance, as I had a limited amount of time in a build where portions of the world aren't even there yet. But there are separate zones designed for certain levels of characters.

The quest structure in the portions I played mostly led me by the hand from hub to hub, and I felt I was being whisked past experiences like getting lost and spontaneously adventuring into a cavern or a fort, as you do so frequently in other Elder Scrolls games. There is plenty to find off the beaten path, but the zone flow makes it feel like Zenimax doesn't care whether you find it or not. I also worry that partitions and loading screens will kill the sense of a seamless, immersive world, but I can't confirm how frequently these will appear.

All things considered, there are more reasons to be excited for Elder Scrolls Online than I expected to find, which was refreshing and encouraging. I could foresee it becoming a strong, second-tier contender in a league with Rift and EVE, based on the number of things it does right. Unfortunately, it seems to be cutting just enough key corners with the Daedric Knife of MMO Design Philosophy to fall short of the sublime, multiplayer Elder Scrolls experience we've all been dreaming of.

If you're anxious to see it for yourself, you can sign up for a chance at the closed beta on the ESO site. It'll also be playable at PAX East this weekend.

Mar 19, 2013

The Elder Scrolls Online hands-on: first-person mode, skills, stealth and more

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion® Game of the Year Edition (2009)

At a press event at Zenimax Online Studios last week, the Elder Scrolls Online developer waited until the end of a lengthy presentation to deliver arguably the most important piece of news about their upcoming MMO. In short: TESO will have a full first-person mode in the Elder Scrolls style. This is, I suspect, what the majority of fans have been waiting to hear. It should certainly delay the inevitable “meh” in the comments below, if such a thing is possible.

First person wasn’t available in the build I played - we were shown it in a video, but it looks great. The constraints of MMO development mean that The Elder Scrolls Online isn’t as technically impressive as Skyrim, but this was the moment when the penny dropped for me. Having powered through two and a bit zones’ worth of content - the first six levels of the game, playing as the Daggerfall Covenant faction - there’s much that makes TESO distinct and interesting as an MMO: but proper first person play is the thing.

T.J. will be writing about his experience of the game from the perspective of a longstanding Elder Scrolls fan later on today: in this article, I’m going to cover the new information that came to light in my three hours with the game. Up front, though, I will say this: I went in worried and came out pretty pleased. There are new ideas here. I don’t believe that there’s a single type of person defined by the phrase ‘Elder Scrolls fan’ and I can see it working for some but not others. If your time in Skyrim was exclusively spent tooling around with emergent systems, murdering townspeople in their beds and stacking cheese wheels, then you’ll feel the absence of those things from TESO. If you’re up for something a bit more structured, then keep it on your radar.

The UI is among the most minimalistic I’ve seen in an MMO. The only persistent on-screen items are a crosshair, a minimap, and a small quest tracker. Health, stamina and magicka bars along with the hotbar appear during combat or when you’re wounded, but otherwise the focus is on the world. There are no damage numbers or debuff indicators for enemies beyond what is visibly happening to them. At present, the game could do with better feedback - I can get behind the idea of toning down typical MMO on-hit fireworks, but they need to be replaced with something and at the moment it’s not quite there.

Dialogue takes place in a zoomed-in first person similar to Skyrim, with a slightly expanded dialogue menu that more closely resembles Morrowind. It’s all fully voiced, but facial animation is a bit rough at the moment.

The inventory and skill menus follow Skyrim’s trend toward representing as much in-world as possible. Bringing either of these up zooms the camera in on your character in the world, who then effectively acts as your paper doll for equipping items.

Combat, while not as impactful as Skyrim, is not based on MMO-style rotations. As in any of the post-Morrowind TES games, you swing your weapon (or fire your bow or staff) with the left mouse button and block with the right. Holding attack charges up a powerful strike, and attacking while blocking results in a spell-interrupting bash. If you manage to block an enemy’s telegraphed power attack you’ll stun them, and your subsequent blows do more damage.

The hotbar includes six slots for abilities plus an additional ultimate skill - I didn’t get to use these, but one example would be a Meteor spell - and a consumable. Its resemblance to a traditional MMO quickbar is deceptive, because skills in TESO are not cooldown based. Your ability to spam skills is entirely based on your available health, stamina or magicka, and as such combat is more about effective use of those resources than it is about settling into a set rhythm. Blocking, sprinting and dodging use stamina, for example, making them a trade-off with powerful melee skills like cleaves.

Unlike prior Elder Scrolls games, spells do not need to be equipped into a hand before being cast - they fire instantly. This speeds up combat and is the chief thing - besides the aforementioned feedback issues - that makes TESO feel different to previous games in the series. Expect to see more spells being cast, by more people. Nonetheless, the system is theoretically closer to the single player games than it is to most MMOs.

Stealth is available to everyone, but it isn’t as deep as Skyrim. Press control to crouch and you enter sneak mode, which allows you to bypass camps of enemies and complete quests without violence if you’re good at it. It’s based on line of sight rather than dynamic light levels, so sneaking about requires a bit of planning. Sneaking replaces your cursor with a Skyrim-style eye to let you know when you’re liable to be detected.

It’s also possible to loot disguises from select enemies or find them in camps. Wearing a disguise allows you to move around normally in hostile areas, but getting to close to an alert enemy can break your cover.

The skill system sits somewhere between Skyrim and Guild Wars 2, with select improvements over both. As in Skyrim, levelling up in TESO earns you a boost to either health, stamina or magicka and a skill point to spend. You start the game with a selection of skill lines based on your class, race, and equipment. Examples from the weapons group would be:

Two Handed
One Hand and Shield
Dual wield
Bow
Destruction Staff
Restoration Staff

Investing points in each skill line unlocks new passive and active skills. Active skills level up through use, and at rank five you can spend another skill point to ‘morph’ these spells and abilities into one of two variants. An example we were shown was a Daedric summoning skill that could be altered to conjure either an exploding scamp or a hulking clannfear.

Although there will be a finite amount of skill points available to a single character, more skill lines can be acquired over time. Members of the Fighters’ and Mages’ Guilds, for example, get access to new skills based on their rank in those factions. There are special abilities for PvP, and this is also how special player states like vampirism will be handled. The system is impressive precisely because it’s so expandable: its easy to see how new skill lines can add options to the game without imbalancing it in the way that an extended level cap or tacked-on alternate advancement system might.

The Fighters’ and Mages’ Guilds will be in at launch, with thieves and the Dark Brotherhood to be added later. Fighter’s Guild members will be tasked with hunting Daedra and banishing Molag Bal’s Dark Anchors from the surface of Tamriel. Mages are tasked with tracking down necromantic lore.

Towns are relatively static, but enemy combat AI has been reworked. NPCs in TESO live deterministic lives based on your actions: they do move about, but this is phased as part of your progress within the various questlines. In combat, however, things are more flexible. Enemies will interact with one another based on their type - for example, multiple humanoid foes will work together, calling for healing or special attacks as the situation demands. Then, enemies who all belong to the same faction will have access to additional powers. The example we were shown was a group of necromancers - a warrior and two mages of different schools - dynamically starting a sacrificial summoning ritual to hold off the player party.

Monsters also have special abilities. Spriggans will possess and enhance any woodland predators that stray nearby, and spiders will eat their slain allies to gain strength. Lovely.

Quests are very subtly instanced. Its surprising to be playing an MMO and find a quest giver jogging alongside you once you’ve picked up their quest - or to emerge from a dungeon only to have the person you’re helping run over to give you your reward straight away. This is thanks to a phasing implementation that is almost seamless. A major part of every personal story will be assembling a group of heroes, and these allies are not only consistent across zones but appear in the open world rather than in specific story instances. Other players’ companions are rendered as anonymous mercenaries, preserving your immersion in a way that evades TOR-style companion clone syndrome.

It looks like an Elder Scrolls game, but it has been designed as an MMO.

An evident effort has been made to match up TESO to the art style and geography established by the previous games, but interiors and doorways have been enlarged to accommodate more players. We were told that the height maps from Oblivion and Skyrim have informed the layout of the relevant zones. In a neat touch, the fortresses that you’ll fight over in PvP are based on the ruins from Oblivion, including their name and approximate locations.

You can play through every zone on a single character, regardless of faction. There’s a reason why few MMOs bother with three factions nowadays - it’s a vast amount of content to create, particularly when you’re only likely to see a third of it. TESO’s solution is clever. You’ll level from 1-50 and do your personal story with your chosen faction, then when you’re finished you can pick a second faction to play through in what amounts to a new game plus. Zones and encounters are buffed to 50 and loot updated accordingly. Then, when you finish that you’ll be able to play through the final faction in an even tougher mode. You’ll still only be able to group and socialise with members of your own faction, but it means you don’t have to pick what race you play based solely on what zones you want to adventure in. Your Breton will get to wander around Skyrim.

Crafting adopts a lot of what was good about Skyrim’s alchemy and applies it to the whole system. There are five professions: Armorsmith, Weaponsmith, Enchanter, Alchemist and Provisioner (cook). One player will be able to dabble in all five, but only one can be fully mastered. Items are made from a set of base ingredients and then a selection of bonus additives which all have hidden properties similar to alchemical ingredients in prior TES games. Reverse-engineering looted items will allow you to determine some of these properties, which can then be applied to your own items. In addition, you also pick a style for wearable items like weapons and armour: an iron axe could be orcish, Breton, aldmeri etc. We watched one of the game’s designers invest heavily in crafting a Fine Iron Battle Axe of Undead Bane of Lightning. I understand they’re working on the name.

The Elder Scrolls Online will be playable on the floor at PAX East this week and is in closed beta now. We’ll have a video interview with two of the game’s senior designers going up at 3pm GMT, with T.J.’s take to follow at 4pm.

Mar 6, 2013

I'm A Mormon. Pop Culture Often Mocks My Faith, But Fallout Treated It Right

Fallout 3

I'm a 31-year-old, fifth-generation Mormon (member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) from Salt Lake City, Utah and I love video games.

I've been playing since my parents brought home the original NES with Track & Field, Duck Hunt, and The Legend of Zelda. Unlike most of my friends I never "grew out" of video games and love them today as much or more than I did as a kid. Among my many loves (Demon's Souls, Half-Life 2, Total Annihilation, Mass Effect) stand two games I just can't get enough of: Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.

I must say that I was surprised how my religion was featured in the most recent Fallout I played.

I had never heard of Fallout until 2010 when I noticed my friend's little brother had logged over 125 hours in Fallout 3 on his Steam account. Intrigued, I rented Fallout 3 and was instantly hooked in that rare and wonderful way that happens when you experience something truly new and wholly captivating. I plowed through it on my PS3. I would get up at 5:00am to play before the kids woke up and the work day started, logging some 40 hours in the 10 or so days it took me to complete the main story. When I returned the game I was dogged by how many locations and quests I had to leave unexplored and unfulfilled due to my limited rental window.

After building a gaming desktop for my birthday and getting both New Vegas and Fallout 3: GOTY on the Steam Summer Sale, I knew I was in for a pair of very special treats. I have since logged over 200 hours in Fallout 3 and another 130 in Fallout: New Vegas.

Mormons of the Wasteland

As a Mormon, I am much more accustomed to seeing my religion portrayed in unflattering and even disrespectful ways in entertainment media ("Fort Joe Smith" in Starship Troopers comes to mind, as does The Book of Mormon Broadway musical and HBO's Big Love series) than to seeing any positive or deferential representations. Hence, when I came across The Old Mormon Fort outside New Vegas it naturally piqued my curiosity as to how it would be featured. Would the game's developers at Obsidian take the well-worn road of clichéd irony by making The Old Mormon Fort some den of hypocritical debauchery or zealous extremism, or would they do something different?

I wasn't expecting anything necessarily pro-religion, let alone reverent. This is a Fallout game, after all.

Photo via DesertUSA.com; screenshot by the author.

I was nevertheless surprised and impressed by what I found inside The Old Mormon Fort: a struggling but hopeful sanctuary for the lost and ill-fated souls of the Mojave wasteland. I found a people whose purpose very much in harmony with the aspirations of Mormonism and Christianity generally. (For those who may have heard otherwise, we Mormons worship Jesus Christ and consider ourselves Christians.) While Mormons weren't the ones running the show-it was the Followers of the Apocalypse who had set up shop there-their noble goals and purpose, connected as they were (at least nominally) to the Mormons, gave me a strong feeling of appreciation. They intrigued me.

I wanted to find out if there were more Mormon references in the Fallout universe, and were they as curiously sympathetic and respectful as this? Thanks to the exceptional collection of Fallout resources at falloutwiki.com—including numerous leaked documents from the pre-Obsidian studio Black Isle's cancelled alternate Fallout 3 project in which the Mormons of Vault 70 were going to figure rather prominently—I have been able to analyze Obsidian's Fallout Mormons from the perspective of a lifelong member, and am pleased to share what I found.

Some minor Fallout: New Vegas spoilers will follow

Joshua Graham: The Prodigal Son

Clearly the most significant Mormon character in the Fallout universe is Joshua Graham, also known as Malpais Legate and The Burned Man.

For those who don't know the lore, Joshua Graham was a Mormon missionary sent from New Canaan (post-apocalyptic Ogden, Utah) to preach to the tribes of Arizona. Like most real-life Mormon missionaries, Graham had to learn a new language in order to preach to the Arizona tribals and, like most real-life Mormon missionaries, was able to do so. I myself served a Spanish-speaking mission to the Mojave wastelands of San Bernardino county, California. And Utah boasts one of the highest concentrations of US-born polyglots-speakers of more than one language-in the country due to the Church's foreign missionary efforts, with 30% of Utah's male population and up to 75% of the students of the Church's Brigham Young University speaking a foreign tongue.

In the game, it appears that Graham's linguistic abilities may have been pivotal in the formation of Caesar's Legion. Graham had been sent from New Canaan to preach to the tribes of Arizona and had managed to master a number of the tribal dialects. Meanwhile, The Followers of the Apocalypse dispatched a research party from California to study the tribal languages that were emerging in the east. They met Graham along their way and enlisted his help as a translator.

Shortly thereafter, Graham and the Followers were captured by the Blackfoot tribe, one of the weakest of eight warring tribes in the region. Fearing they would be killed along with their captors, a Follower named Edward Sallow determined that to survive they needed to remake the tribals into a capable fighting force. With his knowledge of ancient Rome, Sallow enlisted Graham's linguistic talents to help him train the Blackfoot tribe in the ways of total war.

Sallow and Graham went on to lead the tribe in conquest after conquest, with both men ultimately forgetting or abandoning their humble and humanitarian beginnings and getting caught up in the violent rise to power of their new nation.

I take no offense at the story of Graham becoming Caesar's first Legate and actually thought it was exciting to have a Mormon figure so prominently in the history of one of Fallout's principal factions. One big reason for this was because his fall was precipitated by very human failings (fear of death, lust for power, pride, etc.), not a failing specific to his religion. Consequently, Graham becoming a ruthless villain doesn't feel like an attack on Mormonism any more than Caesar forming the Legion feels like an attack on the Followers of the Apocalypse (which it doesn't).

But it is Graham's life after the Legion that sheds light on another reason why I appreciate Obsidian's handling of Mormonism so much.

Obsidian avoids the lazy cliché of religious people being hypocritically unforgiving and intolerant.

After failing at the first battle of Hoover Dam, Caesar has Graham covered in pitch, set on fire, and thrown into the Grand Canyon. Graham, already renowned for his resilience as much as for his cruelty, survives. Stripped of power, title, and purpose, he returns to New Canaan filled with remorse for what he had become and for the shame he brought to his people.

Here again, Obsidian avoids the lazy cliché of religious people being hypocritically unforgiving and intolerant and has the Mormons of New Canaan forgiving the penitent Graham, embracing him as a returning prodigal.

I'm not sure if Obsidian was touching on the general theme of sin, repentance, and redemption common in most all of Christianity or if they looked more specifically at Mormon history, but this type of story played out repeatedly in the early history of the Mormon church. There were multiple times that high-ranking Church members betrayed Church leaders by swearing false affidavits (i.e. Mormons planned to overthrow the government) which resulted in repeated imprisonments and even near execution, only to later have the traitors return seeking forgiveness and finding it extended by a magnanimous prophet and people (see W. W. Phelps, Thomas B. Marsh, Oliver Cowdery).

Regardless of what inspired the plotline, once again I appreciated that the core Christian tenet of repentance, forgiveness, and redemption figured so prominently in the story of saint-turned-sinner-turned-saint, Joshua Graham.

As a fun side-note regarding the fictional Graham and a famous real-life Mormon, Fallout: New Vegas project lead J. E. Sawyer said in an online Q&A that one interesting aspect of Mormon history is that John Browning, inventor of the M1911 pistol, BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle), and M2 .50 Cal Machine Gun, was a Mormon from Ogden, Utah. Joshua Graham, perhaps in a show of hometown pride and religious camaraderie, seems to be quite a fan of Browning's M1911 .45 Caliber pistols.

"Elder" Bert Gunnarsson & Driver Nephi

Until I started writing this I had overlooked that Bert Gunnarsson was a Mormon (probably due to most of the Mormon-related dialogue not making the final cut of the game), but I certainly had my suspicions about Driver Nephi.

While the name Nephi will not likely carry any significance to anyone outside Utah or the Mormon Church, to those in the Church Nephi is the first author of The Book of Mormon. For Fallout players, however, Nephi is one of the three fiend leaders that NCR Major Dhatri asks The Courier to kill in the Three-Card Bounty quest.

Bert Gunnarsson, on the other hand, is a ghoul medic and Mormon working with the Followers of the Apocalypse. He can be found helping NCR Captain Parker care for the poor and needy of New Vegas at the Aerotech Office Park.

If you speak to Gunnarsson he reveals that he is ministering to the poor and needy of New Vegas and that he has some medical training from the Followers. However, the GECK (mod tool) reveals a number of lines of unused dialogue that more fully flesh out his character. In one of Bert's lines he explains that in the Church people call him "Elder Gunnarsson," the title borne by full-time missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, implying that Bert is a Mormon missionary.

Also cut from the final game was an option that allowed The Courier to ask Bert what brought him out of Utah, to which he replies, "Following a lost cause, I'm afraid. My old friend Nephi fell in with a bad crowd. Drug runners, raiders, probably worse things it's better not to dwell on. When his gang headed west, I followed. I thought perhaps I could turn him back to the Church." This obviously implies that the golf-club wielding fiend Driver Nephi is also a Mormon, albeit a seriously lapsed one.

Again, I find much to appreciate in these two characters and their stories. First of all, Bert Gunnarsson is a Swedish name. Scandanavia was the second most successful foreign mission in the early days of the Mormon church with 23,000 Scandanavian converts emigrating to Utah between 1852 and 1905. Consequently, Elder Gunnarsson may be a seventh- or eighth-generation Mormon, his ancestors perhaps dating back to those early Swedish converts. Did Obsidian know this historical tid-bit? I don't know, but their research into Mormonism so far seems to reflect a much deeper level of effort than is typically evidenced in entertainment media, so maybe they did.

Another way in which I feel Obsidian avoided a tired anti-religious cliché is in making Gunnarsson a ghoul.

In many media depictions, religious people are xenophobic and intolerant of the "other." In the Fallout universe, the group that most fits the persecuted "other" is the ghouls.

As Three Dog reminds us in Fallout 3, "For all you would-be bigots out there, ghouls are people too. See children, ghouls are simply humans who have been exposed to an ungodly amount of radiation and haven't had the good fortune to die...So if you meet one of the wasteland's many ghouls, leave your prejudice at the door, and your pistol in its holster." Three Dog reminds his listeners continuously about the unfair and apparently wide-spread anti-ghoul prejudice that exists among the humans of the wasteland. In this sense it is encouraging to see one of the only explicitly religious characters depicted as both a Mormon and a ghoul. This seems to indicate to me that the Fallout Mormons are not the xenophobic other-hating religious stereotypes featured in some media: Not only do they accept ghouls among their ranks but send them out as official representatives of the faith.

Lastly, it is poignant to me to think of this ghoul missionary following his wayward friend over 400 miles into the desert in the hopes that he might turn him from his self-destructive path.

It is poignant to me to think of this ghoul missionary following his wayward friend over 400 miles into the desert in the hopes that he might turn him from his self-destructive path.

In cut dialogue, Driver Nephi speaks ungenerously of his old friend and tells The Courier to tell Bert that he's never coming back to "his little cult." Bert admits to The Courier in another piece of cut dialogue that he was "never able to reach" Nephi, and that "drugs and hatred" have consumed him. In spite of this, it seems that Bert is determined to wait and hope for a change of heart that may lead his friend away from the fiends and toward redemption. Given that Bert is a ghoul and does not have an NCR bounty on his head, he likely knows he will outlive Nephi and seems willing to give as many of his long ghoul years as he must to offer his friend a lifeline back.

When death inevitably comes to Driver Nephi, likely at the hands of The Courier, if the player speaks to him Bert laments Nephi's passing (oddly, it would seem, given that all of the related dialog was cut) and expresses the hope that Nephi's soul is at peace.

"Elder" Bert Gunnarsson exemplifies the Mormon belief in the power of repentance and forgiveness, and that even someone as lost and sinful as the murderous Driver Nephi can be redeemed.

If you might indulge a film-based redemption analogy to further illustrate the point (*Pulp Fiction spoiler ahead*), it is as though Joshua Graham is Jules Winfield and Driver Nephi is Vincent Vega, with each of the former surviving a near-death experience and turning from their wicked ways to find forgiveness, and each of the latter persisting in their wicked ways and finding death.

Obsidian not only thoughtfully presents the concepts of repentance, forgiveness, and redemption in connection with Mormons but also the self-sacrifice, patience, and hope of the people seeking to extend those gifts to others as Mormon missionaries, like Elder Gunnarsson, work to do the world (or wasteland) over every day.

More Mormons of the Wasteland

There are a few other fair-minded Mormon Easter eggs in the Fallout universe, but they would take too long to explain and are relatively trivial compared to those presented here (but for those that are interested, see Jeremiah Rigdon, the rise and fall of New Jerusalem, Caesar's extermination order and Missouri Executive Order 44, Daniel from Honest Hearts and Ammon from The Book of Mormon).

I as a Mormon feel a deep sense of appreciation for the time and energy Obsidian clearly spent researching Mormonism historically, culturally, and spiritually.

Rather than taking the safe route in the entertainment industry of making Christianity, and especially Mormon Christianity, a punching bag or the butt of a string of jokes, Obsidian has shown that at least in post-apocalyptia, Mormons can get a fair shake.

Skip Cameron plays video games and goes to church in Boise, ID and has to make time to game before the sun and his kids are up. He posts screenshots of his adventures through the wasteland at viewfromravenrock.blogspot.com

Jan 25, 2013

What we want from Fallout 4

Fallout 3

There’s some scuttlebutt regarding a new Fallout floating around the internet: the radioactive smoke is curling up from the burning, irradiated embers. Bethesda have been registering names, and the in-game DJ’s voice actor has promised more from him. Could it be? Is it possible?

With Skyrim out of the stable, there’s definitely room for Bethesda to get irradiating the world again. There’s a really good base, but there’s always room for improvement. And, what do you know, I’ve written down some thoughts on what they could work on.

Livelier roads, cities, and towns. There's a reason these things pop up time and time again on the Fallout mod sites. It’s a basic incompatibility at the heart of Bethesda’s game: most games are a bit more fun with a livelier world, but the world of Fallout follows on from the razing of the human race. Bethesda tend to err on the side of caution with this, though tech issues are probably to blame for the rather empty casinos of New Vegas, but creating a world means populating it, and the mods that add new travelers and people still do that without impacting the overall feeling of loneliness. As it is,the roads of the Wasteland are a bit too quiet for the game they’re part of.

Make it about survival. In Bethesda’s hands, the Wasteland is fun. By the middle of a run through you’re clobbering Deathclaws with concrete capped rebars and sipping irradiated water without a care in the world. Possibly with a pinkie out. The point being is that the notion of survival becomes obsolete in a world dripped in caps to find, traders to sell to, and junk to collect. New Vegas has hardcore mode, forcing you to think about food, water, and rest, as well as altering the way meds and stimpaks work, but it’s still a world that can easily and comfortably be lived in. It needn’t be the main difficulty level, but the option to make the world a harsh place to live, to make the players think about every move, not just their weapon and perk choices, would give the ashy flavour of survival.

Bethesda's Design, Obsidian's Characters. There I was, wandering beneath a line-up of broken satellite dishes, looking for things to do when I spied a door. What could be behind it? A gang of gangers? A terrified NPC? A few steps towards it, a glance around to make sure there was nothing sneaking up. I popped the door. Behind it was a wall with “Fuck You” written on it. Bethesda’s worlds tend to be packed with detail, big and small. They’re places to live in and enjoy, and just brilliant places to explore. Their characters, however, are a lot less engaging. Obsidian’s take on New Vegas was packed with morally dubious Wastelanders with dark stories. Acquiring Boone as a follower, for example, meant leading a person out into a field for the deranged sniper to shoot. That’s dark enough, but as a player you could happily lead an innocent into Boone’s sights. Somewhere in the middle of Fallout 3 and New Vegas is the sweet spot they should be aiming for: dark, compelling characters in a curated world.

Treat us like PC gamers. I've never loaded up a Bethesda game and felt the studio really understood what PC gamers want from them. We have screen space and we have a pointing device that just seems to baffle them. I understand there’s a fictional reason for the Pipboy’s clunkiness, but all too often Bethesda will choose that over usability. Fallout 3 and New Vegas are remarkable examples of how to not lead a player through a game’s menus. I *have* to install a UI mod to deal with the endless scrolling of the inventories. When it comes to pure usability, divorce the theme from the menus

The same is true for FOV: the first thing I have to do in any Bethesda game is to hunt for an FOV hack. That I can do it is evidence that the engine is capable, and I’m still baffled that it’s not a native selection. Give me a damn slider.

Meaningful Character Creation. There are a fair number of perks, abilities and skills to begin with in Fallout. But there’s nothing to set allegiances or race. Bethesda’s Fallouts give you plenty of opportunity to interact with factions, and alliances will be built from your actions, but what if you don’t want to put the work in, or want to roleplay from the opening bell? It needn't allow you to select playing as a Ghoul, but predisposing you towards the NPR would make an interesting challenge to overcome.

Think about the Karma system. I nuked Megaton. I actually destroyed a town full of people. I can’t imagine any game allowing me to claw my way back from that, but Fallout 3 let me. Through good deeds I managed to reclaim my karma and end-up with a reasonably decent character sheet. I wouldn't mind my deeds being somewhat recognised, but I blew up a town. There are no meaningful consequences that you can’t undo. Make it harder to turn myself around, and make some choices indelible. By the same token, if I’m stealing things from bad people, don’t make that a hit on my karma. By all means make the faction hate me, but the world should recognise the good I just did.

More than one city. Bethesda’s games just don’t have the scope of the original series, because building all that content and the space in between in the sort of game that they make would take a decade. But the DLC that they've added to the game has shown a willingness to allow the player to simply hop to another area without worrying about the space in between. Or just choose a reasonably close cluster of cities that the fiction hasn't totaled.

Make it it hurt. My violent streak has never been well-served by Fallout 3 or NV (I like Skyrim’s bows, though). VATs is nice touch, and certainly enhances the basic combat, but whether it’s swinging a concrete caked rebar, or zapping with the Wasteland’s most advanced lasergundeath tech, there’s weediness to it. There’s little heft to the melee weapons, and the report of the guns doesn't match what they do to enemies. Please, Bethesda, play Dark Messiah and Red Orchestra, two games where the combat feels utterly perfect. That’s the level of combat excellence that an action Fallout needs.

A use for everything. Speaking of that, Fallout New Vegas allowed you to mod your guns a little, augmenting them with scopes and such. That’s a good start. This is a world where invention is a necessary part of survival, and where scavenging should be part of a crafting system that allows you build everything and anything, and to mod things on top of that. I’d even lobby for individual components to be brought in from the Steam Workshop. Oh yeah...

Use The Steam Workshop. This is kind of a lock: the Skyrim Workshop is the third busiest of the modder’s distribution platforms. But what I would urge is for Bethesda to make the tools available on launch day. It will help with content, and if none of the above in the list makes it, it’ll give the modders a jump on fiddling with and fixing everything on the list above.

Mormons of the Wasteland

Joshua Graham: The Prodigal Son

"Elder" Bert Gunnarsson & Driver Nephi

More Mormons of the Wasteland

Rush (Mega Man series)

Angelo (Final Fantasy VIII)

The Not-So-Awesome Dog in Duck Hunt

K.K. Slider (Animal Crossing series)

Dogmeat (Fallout 1-3)

Bladewolf (Metal Gear Rising)

Sam (Sam & Max)

Poppy (Samurai Shodown series)

Boney (Mother 3)

Our Dog in Fable II and III