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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2749 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 4, 2022

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I think the idea they might have been going for is that Patriarch's rule was beneficial at first but he's been losing his touch, as evinced by the fact that his children are running loose and you now have all these new gangs / barbarian tribes staking their claims on Colorado. Ie. sure, Colorado might have needed a tough-as-nails despot at one time, but one of the problems with despots is that if they don't know when to give up, well, who's going to make them do so? And one thing that him not giving up and making sure that he's properly grooming a successor is that his children are out of control, which just adds to his reasoning to not give up etc.

Also, if you do the RPG info sleuthing thing where you make sure to lockpick everything, find a lot of additional info etc., you get more data on bad stuff done by the Patriarch - selling his people as slaves to be murdered by the crazy kite people, killing his wives etc.

In the end, I think that one of the main problems is just there's also a tension with Fallout/Wasteland games how much grim apocalypse stuff and how much "leavening" goofy stuff you add in, and while FO3, for instance, went too much in the grim and joyless direction, WL3 goes far too much in the goofy direction. I didn't like the clown gang or the monster gang, hated the stupid robots, the splatter-style bloodiness of Aspen was just unpleasant, in general Colorado Springs and the fortress were full of good and interesting stuff but once you got out there was just too risk of things getting a bit too silly.

Also, I guess it's pretty much mandatory that you have to put some cannibals in your post-apocalypse game, but I think this had at least four or five different groups of cannibals or individual cannibals, what the hell?

I think the idea they might have been going for is that Patriarch's rule was beneficial at first but he's been losing his touch

This is mentioned a couple of times offhand by a few auxiliary characters (Gideon Reyes being the main one iirc), but that is definitely not the reason Angela Deth is overthrowing him, and seeming not why you the Player Rangers are overthrowing him (the available dialogue options against the Patriarch imply you're doing it because you think he's an unjust tyrant). In fact, the Patriarch's age and deteriorating health are completely irrelevant. The fact you can learn and comment on his condition leads nowhere, and it's not even a necessary condition to get the peaceful transition ending. The overthrowing of Patriarch is pretty much exclusively based on the belief he's an unjust tyrant.

find a lot of additional info etc., you get more data on bad stuff done by the Patriarch - selling his people as slaves to be murdered by the crazy kite people, killing his wives etc.

Yeah I'm aware, I briefly mentioned it but I didn't go into in my original post. Although iirc he only actually killed one of his wives, who tried to assassinate/overthrow him, at least it's implied from visiting all the graves after seeing the map after confronting Victory. Patriarch was giving prisoners to the gangs as slaves as part of his deal for them to leave Colorado Springs. Which yeah, is pretty shitty, but relative to all the shit going around him is understandable. If we were to judge the Patriarch against leaders throughout history, not just contemporary society (which the writers implicitly want you do to) Patriarch is actually really quite tame. If that's the price to keep Colorado Springs safe, the only island of stability in a world of post-apocalyptic chaos, it's probably justified. Specially in contrast to Deth's plan of overthrowing him (violently) and just hoping everything doesn't collapse on itself. Deth's own plan also involves freeing a slaver leader (Ironclad Cordite) to use him against the Patriarch, and when he eventually leaves to go to Kansas to go conquer and kill there, you can actually question Deth about her hypocrisy and the atrocities Cordite will certainly commit and she just handwaves it away as 'yeah he probably won't make it that far and will be betrayed by his own gang eventually, don't worry about it'. Yeah, real confidence inducing.

In the end, I think that one of the main problems is just there's also a tension with Fallout/Wasteland games how much grim apocalypse stuff and how much "leavening" goofy stuff you add in.

Somehow Fallout NV handled it perfectly fine, and yes, even I will begrudgingly admit the Bethesda Fallouts did a decent job of balancing this. I honestly just think it comes down to the Wasteland 3 writers just not being very good.

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