Conflicting plots of the two wastelands?

[Greslin]

[quote=JaxFirehart]

 

It is worth mentioning that the Platinum Chip was printed in Sunnyvale California and the wiki implies that is also where it was found. A bit of creative story telling could explain why House might be so desperate as to search DC, but it is going to be a bit of a stretch.

[/quote]

Ah, ye of little faith.. :)

House didn't know for sure it'd be in Sunnyvale, even though it was printed there.  He spent a huge amount of money - somewhere around 800,000 caps in 2280 - over a roughly seven year period searching for it.  And we're talking about what, back in 2077, would likely have been a wartime defense project. 

There's lots of reasons why the chip might be in DC or elsewhere.  The software may have been developed there, only the final printing to happen in Sunnyvale, and perhaps the final fabrication didn't happen in time before the bombs fell.  DC is a long shot, but so is the entire search.  Basically a poker chip lost for 200 years somewhere in the desolate nuclear wasteland.

The most likely DC scenario I see is that it may have ended up in Brotherhood of Steel archives.  Back in the day, they had a strong presence in the Bay Area, in San Francisco and almost certainly down the road at the Fallout version of Livermore Labs, where FEV was created with West Tek.  Livermore is only about 25 miles from Sunnyvale (I live about an hour from both).

So let's say that, as the Brotherhood-NCR war starts going badly for the BoS, the West Coast elders see the writing on the wall and start shipping more of their recovered prewar artifacts to the East aboard BoS airships (much as the Enclave did with their assets, and for much the same reasons).  Not to mention, keeping it out of NCR hands.  There's a reasonable chance that the Livermore recoveries could be among them.  They shipped the last Maxson scion to DC, after all; it was only somewhere around 2276, shortly before the Outcast desertion, that their supply lines were finally cut by Lost Hills.

Sure, the chip ended up in Sunnyvale after all.  But House spent a LOT of money over years chasing what amounted to dead ends.  With the Brotherhood out there doing their thing, the DC Wasteland is certainly full of promising dead ends.

I have some thoughts about where the trail leads in DC from there, but I'll get into that tale in the mod itself.

 

 

[LT Albrecht]

[quote=Greslin]

 

JaxFirehart wrote:

 

It is worth mentioning that the Platinum Chip was printed in Sunnyvale California and the wiki implies that is also where it was found. A bit of creative story telling could explain why House might be so desperate as to search DC, but it is going to be a bit of a stretch.

 

Ah, ye of little faith.. :)

House didn't know for sure it'd be in Sunnyvale, even though it was printed there.  He spent a huge amount of money - somewhere around 800,000 caps in 2280 - over a roughly seven year period searching for it.  And we're talking about what, back in 2077, would likely have been a wartime defense project. 

There's lots of reasons why the chip might be in DC or elsewhere.  The software may have been developed there, only the final printing to happen in Sunnyvale, and perhaps the final fabrication didn't happen in time before the bombs fell.  DC is a long shot, but so is the entire search.  Basically a poker chip lost for 200 years somewhere in the desolate nuclear wasteland.

The most likely DC scenario I see is that it may have ended up in Brotherhood of Steel archives.  Back in the day, they had a strong presence in the Bay Area, in San Francisco and almost certainly down the road at the Fallout version of Livermore Labs, where FEV was created with West Tek.  Livermore is only about 25 miles from Sunnyvale (I live about an hour from both).

So let's say that, as the Brotherhood-NCR war starts going badly for the BoS, the West Coast elders see the writing on the wall and start shipping more of their recovered prewar artifacts to the East aboard BoS airships (much as the Enclave did with their assets, and for much the same reasons).  Not to mention, keeping it out of NCR hands.  There's a reasonable chance that the Livermore recoveries could be among them.  They shipped the last Maxson scion to DC, after all; it was only somewhere around 2276, shortly before the Outcast desertion, that their supply lines were finally cut by Lost Hills.

Sure, the chip ended up in Sunnyvale after all.  But House spent a LOT of money over years chasing what amounted to dead ends.  With the Brotherhood out there doing their thing, the DC Wasteland is certainly full of promising dead ends.

I have some thoughts about where the trail leads in DC from there, but I'll get into that tale in the mod itself.

[/quote]

From what I can tell he spent 800,000 caps scouring the ruins of Sunnyvale in the hope that it'd not been destroyed - a prospect worth such expenses considering its value to him. There are a bunch of things he might want out of DC though - what was left of any Robco offices for starters. Add to any defense projects he might've been working on that he now saw a use for, there are many things to draw house's attention to DC without hijacking the main thread of the story. I mean it's a stated fact the chip was made in Sunnyvale and House knew fabrication was completed, but delivery was to be done the next day.

A fun option (IMO) would be to add a Securitron (with its own face and voice) to the train station in DC, in the sealed levels. Engaging in conversation with it starting a small sidequest where you root through the DC Robco facility (or some new offices in DC) to recover something of use to house, on completion the Securitron explaining to you that actually delivering it will require a train ride and a visit to the offices of something called the 'Mojave Express'. On arrival you go into a 'many years later' spiel and come out a courier, so it at least makes sense that the thing taking you to Vegas is a Courier job, something the player canonically does at least twice more (ED-E and the Platinum chip).

It doesn't burden a player character with any specific set of emotions towards the events, leaving RP options open, it's not a massive deviation from the main plot arcs of either game and it begins Vegas as you will go on - the Courier.

[Greslin]

[quote=LT Albrecht]

 

From what I can tell he spent 800,000 caps scouring the ruins of Sunnyvale in the hope that it'd not been destroyed - a prospect worth such expenses considering its value to him. There are a bunch of things he might want out of DC though - what was left of any Robco offices for starters. Add to any defense projects he might've been working on that he now saw a use for, there are many things to draw house's attention to DC without hijacking the main thread of the story. I mean it's a stated fact the chip was made in Sunnyvale and House knew fabrication was completed, but delivery was to be done the next day.

[/quote]

I've been sifting through the Wiki and official Fallout timeline, working to sort out the plot continuity gaps.  The story details of the two games really aren't that hard to align when you look at them closely.

House didn't spend 800,000 caps looking for the Chip - he spent that much in one year alone.  He came out of his unconscious state in 2274, immediately began resurrecting Vegas with the local tribes and started looking for the Chip at the earliest opportunity.  He found it in 2281, but he'd been looking for it for about seven years.  That implies to me that the search was much wider than a quick look at the printing facility in Sunnyvale.

We know the Chip was printed in Sunnyvale, but that doesn't mean that the software was developed there.  With the Divergence, a lot of Silicon Valley-type research was much more centralized under long lasting wartime conditions, with advanced computer and miniaturized electronics breakthroughs happening only in the mid-21st century.  Since Robco was responsible for the UOS and Pip-Boy, among other things, it's reasonable to assume that the Chip software was also a Robco project.  And the Robco facility in DC, to my knowledge, is the only such location so far mentioned in the Fallout series.

My theory is that the software was developed at Robco DC as a component in Project Safehouse, over probably a couple of years, and then sent to Sunnyvale to be physically printed on a new miniaturized data storage device (again, a recent breakthrough in Fallout lore) in 2077.  It didn't make it to House before the bombs fell.  So if House really wanted to make a smart, thorough search (which he did), he'd send people to both ends of that production line: the fab center in Sunnyvale, and the development center in DC.  To do otherwise would be a colossal waste of time, money and resources.

The other wild card, like I said, is the Brotherhood.  By the time House woke up, they'd been in the DC area for twenty years.  Lost Hills had been shipping supplies and personnel east as their conflicts with the NCR escalated and then went badly for the BoS; the last surviving branch of the Maxson line was sent there to be raised, for goodness sake.  Given the heavy presence the Brotherhood had historically enjoyed in Central and Northern California, there's every reason to seriously consider that advanced tech found in the Bay Area had been shipped to the new and growing BoS center of power in DC.  House clearly would have discovered this and considered that factor in his search.

Then, in 2276, things just go to shit for the BoS in DC.  Lyons goes completely off the reservation, after subtly shifting their mission focus over many years, openly announcing that BoS DC was giving up its tech recovery mission in favor of survivor protection.  Lost Hills cuts off supplies.  The Outcasts revolt.  This was a factor that probably couldn't have been foreseen, and seriously complicates the DC end of the search.

And that's the state of things when the Lone Wanderer makes an appearance in 2277.

So here's my question.  Among much else on that Chip, there is a set of data subroutines that act as an unlocking mechanism for an advanced security protocol.  We know that Robco, Vault-Tec and the US Government enjoyed a close working relationship.  What if that advanced security protocol - in use at the Lucky 38 and at the Securitron Vault at Fortification Hill - had originally been developed with next generation Safehouse facilities like Vault 112 in mind?  And what if LW finds 112, only to discover that the underground entryway is locked?

What if the Chip - or at least the software developed for the Chip - is also the key for opening 112, enabling the LW to move forward with the Waters of Life quest?

 

[charwo]

Nope. Simply put, in order to have the robotic development that the Fallout universe possesses, the technological development must progress more or less along our lines, which means a 20th century Silicon Valley. I say this because of the development of personal robotics. Those kinds of helper bots are expected to go civilian about 2020. Fallout is at most a decade behind that, I believe right in parallel. You can't have that without the electronic revolution, and you can't have that with vacuum tubes. The transistor came about in the late 40s, mostly right on schedule. The Science! is bullshit: if the physical laws weren't exactly the same as ours at the very least you will have ghouls in 1945, pushing the divergence back into World War II. More likely you get something like Asimov's 'The Gods Themselves.' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_Themselves

 

  My more than hunch is that what we see of the pre-war world is ENTIRELY the post-Resource War and the world before 2050 was so much like ours we'd be hard pressed to tell the difference. The lack of civilian knick knacks means A: someone fragged the internet and most of the infastructure therein, probably during or trying and failing to prevent Israel from pulling the Samson Option. The proto-Enclave simply stepped in kept that mistake of the people's internet from being repeated.

The simplest answer, and one I personally want, is a stat remover upon entering New Vegas. I don't want to try and combine the two as stories. I want to play as two different characters. Cause any LW I would want to play would never abandon the CW. It's his/her/their power base, and the region needs to be completely rebuilt. Ashur was right; the world doesn't need more wandering heroes, it needs builders, administrators, and when violence is called for: justicars, sheriffs and garrisons. Going Courier-fuck-walks-the-wasteland, especially on the other side of the country, is a betrayal of the whole journey of the Lone Wanderer. The Courier must be a different person.

[Greslin]

[quote=charwo]

 

Nope. Simply put, in order to have the robotic development that the Fallout universe possesses, the technological development must progress more or less along our lines, which means a 20th century Silicon Valley. I say this because of the development of personal robotics. Those kinds of helper bots are expected to go civilian about 2020. Fallout is at most a decade behind that, I believe right in parallel. You can't have that without the electronic revolution, and you can't have that with vacuum tubes. The transistor came about in the late 40s, mostly right on schedule. The Science! is bullshit: if the physical laws weren't exactly the same as ours at the very least you will have ghouls in 1945, pushing the divergence back into World War II. More likely you get something like Asimov's 'The Gods Themselves.' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_Themselves

[/quote]

And alas, those aren't the games that Black Isle, Bethesda and Oblivion made.

 

[Puppettron]

charwo, there exists a mod that allows you to choose your startpoint, either mojave or DC.  it's not a perfect solution, which would be changing characters every time you jumped the train, but if you intend to keep save files accurate and keep a character different in each wasteland, it would work.  http://taleoftwowastelands.com/content/start-nv-or-dc

[charwo]

From a New Vegas standpoint, the most useful thing about TTW would be a total DLC integration: adding all the non-uniques from the DLCs to the spawn lists. Why can't a Pitt raider have a BAR? Or a Ghost Person have an Auto-Axe? And everything in between!

Although, this does bring up an interesting question: why do you guys want to merge the game storylines? As opposed to putting Fallout 3 on a better platform with more armors and such?

I did do this in Fallout 2, mostly because I had no desire whatsoever to play a tribal (which I consider degenerate). I love playing Vault Dwellers and other well educated people. But....it didn't really work. A female Chosen One is a very different animal than a female Vault Dweller made clinically immortal by minor exposure to FEV (all things must be justified, that doesn't mean the justification is always good). For one thing, a tribal isn't going to feel the utter betrayal of finding out the remnants of the US government went all Nazi, and abandoned the mainland to die. A vault dweller by all rights would have a cultural upbringing closer to Vault City than being a nature boy.

Besides, with all the swag of Fallout 3 as his/her/their disposal, Courier is the last thing a LW would become. The successor of Ashur is the correct response. But even in the Divide, the Courier didn't RULE it as much as they chartered the passages and kept them open. And it's hard to ambush someone in power armor. And once you have power armor, there's no a reason to travel without wearing it considering it increases your awareness, makes you a tank and it fully climate controlled with built in water purification. Benny and co would never have had a chance.

[Greslin]

Sounds like a fun mod, charwo.  When do you plan on releasing it?

[charwo]

Oh, no! Fallout 2 head mod!

The thing with me, is that I'm very dubious on 'artistic vision.' Also, my characters talk to me, which I've been assured is a 'true writer' thing. I'd love, at the very least to show ya'll what a Vault is supposed to look like, which is less bunker and more argology underground. Imagine something as vibrant as World of Pain's Underground, with plants and gardens and murals not unlike the murals in the Boomer museum....basically Bethesda got everything about the Vaults wrong....well, mostly right in the standard construction, but the Vaults were supposed to grow. The size difference between Vault 112 and every other Vault is about the difference between a standard Vault and what the Vaults generally expanded into by 2077...and my Vault Dweller says they got Vault 11 wrong. That doing the bastard Milligram is something Vault-Tec would do, but they'd run it for five years, put the sacrifices into suspended animation and the true, and more responsible observation would be the aftermath of the reveal in 2082 or before if they refused...Vault-Tec experimenters were trolls, not total monsters...

...Ahem, I would love to show you. But I don't know how to mod. I am trying to find a (in person) teacher on Craigslist, cause I have no more chance to learn to mod by video tutorials than I do to learn to play the piano through video tutorials. Wish me luck...

[Greslin]

By all means.  Good luck finding a mod teacher on Craigslist willing and able to help you realize your artistic and writerly visions.