(In case anyone’s confused,
here’s my premise synopsis on the previous page. Read it first so that this discussion makes more sense.)
@Officer Hotpants
Even without those parts, it’s not a great premise. It introduces the idea of alien worms that brake the canon just by themselves. With that parasite, what’s even the point of FEV? Just give everyone the wormbugs instead, they essentially grant immortality and invincibility.
Welcome to an America full of unkillable supermen. Blue Flu? What’s that?
Okay, so now the mod actually starts. We’re treated to a
cinematic opening that seems at first like your standard Fallout fare. There’s an old timey ad for the vaults (even if the animation in it feels stiff) and then it zooms out to reveal it’s playing on a TV while all manner of anarchic violence happens in the background. It also has a sign showing us that the Black Bear Nation Forest is going to be where this story takes place.
Bit trite and stiff in execution, but again pretty standard opening for Fallout. Also a bit of a homage to Fallout 3’s
announcement trailer since it essentially plays the same sequence of events. Apart from the stiff animation it’s an inoffensive and serviceable opening.
And then the intro speech starts. It gives us the whole “War Never Changes” tagline, and it informs us of two factions we can expect to run into in the game, the
NCR and the
Survivalists. However, the speech feels off and I think that’s the difference in tone.
You see, Ron Perlman in his intro narration of other Fallout games simply gives fairly neutral exposition on what events actually happened (or at least are widely believed to be what happened). By contrast this one feels very preachy, like you’ve accidently found yourself in a sermon from the world’s worst inspirational pastor. >.<
The reason for this becomes clear towards the end of the cutscene, John Bragg is narrating the intro in the form of an inspiration speech for his Vault Ball team. But that just makes the whole thing rather weird, why does Bragg start off this speech talking about how War Never Changes and discussing the apocalypse? For what is essentially a pep talk before the big game?
It’s revealed a bit later that Bragg is grooming the kids of the Vault to serve the Enclave, using his sports lessons to ready them for combat and indoctrinate them. But this speech just lacks any sense of subtlety at all, it feels forced almost for the sake of a comedic subversion. Why the hell would he be going on about factions in the Wasteland, shouldn’t he wait until after he does his little coup before talking about this? Learn who’s actually on-side first?
