Rowan
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| Posted 06/04/10 at 09:16 PM | Reply with quote #1 |
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Discuss this city here.
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Bobbicus
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Registered: 06/09/10
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| Posted 06/17/10 at 01:17 PM | Reply with quote #2 |
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The Hub - the first true "city" you run into in fallout. I like how it springboards you to other areas via the caravans, even if you do have to have good timing to catch a ride with one.
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Rowan
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| Posted 06/18/10 at 12:37 AM | Reply with quote #3 |
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I've noticed playing through again that I've picked up most of the map points from discussion in Shady Sands and Junktown, without even getting to the Hub. Though I do remember it being much easier from the Hub.
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Rowan
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| Posted 06/24/10 at 01:45 PM | Reply with quote #4 |
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Anyone else make it this far yet? How are you all doing?
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TapLup
Registered: 07/08/10
Posts: 14
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| Posted 07/08/10 at 12:10 PM | Reply with quote #5 |
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*One of the best small guns can be found in the Hub (from the farmer who asks you to clear out his farm of raiders) Its a difficult fight but the reward is worth the risk.
*Try not to do too many caravan runs as it eats up alot of time.
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AndrewArmstrong
Moderator - Psychonauts
Registered: 07/22/08
Posts: 365
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| Posted 07/29/10 at 02:53 PM | Reply with quote #6 |
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Well, not much discussion here guys!
Last post for today - The Hub, this brings up an issue with Fallout's map system. It's completely and utterly shit. Baldur's Gate, you're a godsend over this pile'o'crap, and since it was released but a year later I have no idea why they couldn't do proper maps.
Basically, even though I've now left the Hub, and am sure to return, I missed an area. An entire part of the city! How can this happen? It appears I didn't find the slightly-greyer-area that is the connecting bit. Sigh. No way of going between areas apart from those grey areas is very frustrating - yet you can go to any area from off-map by selecting it on the poster.
So mechanics wise; the game has issues - I am sure Fallout 2 is better mechanically, thus why people like to replay it more. Certainly I'm great now at stealing from my allies, heh.
However; the city itself - reasonably fun to go around. Finally got to sell things, with high barter I got a ton of books - here is where I found out reading takes a LOT of time - I still have books to read and I'm at the Necropolis now! Simply don't want to waste my life reading, but I read plenty to get the skills up to 80 or so (it's diminishing returns of course). The library restocks faster then I could read too.
Good thing though that there are things to spend money on. Had around 11000 caps when I left. I still don't think I've really spent one since I started. Bartering is fun! So much more fun then many other RPG's. Got tons of great things - scanner, radiation checker thing, some Rad-Away finally - since I had eaten some fruit before it irradiated me.
Got the great gun after the bandit at the farm fight. Gave that to Ian, he kicks ass when he hits stuff (with the NPC mod he also levelled up a bit here once I got to level 5). Killed Derek or whoever - the evil of the town - simply by accepting his request for murder (nice and trusting of him!) and I didn't even need a tape recorder this time to tell the sheriff. Certainly a streamlined quest system.
To be honest - that is quite a repetitive thing it seems, mirroring Junktown a lot, odd that. In any case, a massively hard fight down in the cellar, but after a few attempts got it nailed with some choice leg shots on the insanely powerful melee fighter. Also; kitted out with metal armour on all NPC's too, which helped significantly mitigating damage. Also I've brought tons of ammo or found it, and have binned a lot of weapons - only a few seem useful after a while, and managing all sorts of weapons is tedious.
Since I missed an area didn't do too much else. Couldn't hand in Bob to the authorities (as mentioned before; a dead end quest line), and didn't want to send water; I've plenty of days left on the clock. I brought the Vault info off the librarian and saw the Necropolis is the last vault - so read some books and hitched a ride with a caravan, doing a small battle with some grasshoppers or something on the way.
Of course, there were other areas I could go to - but time is of the essence in a way - however, I like how they are there if I wanted to go. The Boneyard, the Brotherhood of Steel (even though I was told it'd be pretty useless going there), and so forth all open up on my map. Cool stuff! Once I get this timed quest out of the way I am sure I can journey around a bit more casually. Playing it in character though, I've got to get on with finding a damn chip!
To the Necropolis!
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Bobbicus
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Registered: 06/09/10
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| Posted 07/29/10 at 03:11 PM | Reply with quote #7 |
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Gotta agree with the whole map thing. It's really, really difficult to determine what parts of map will lead you to New and Exciting Places sometimes. I think it's largely due to the use of tiles to make maps. Using a High-res mod also seems to help the issue.
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Rowan
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Registered: 04/23/10
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| Posted 07/29/10 at 03:13 PM | Reply with quote #8 |
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Glad you finally got going in the game! Yeah, The Hub is kind of light in terms of quests, given its supposed size. If you really want justice against Iguana Bob, you can plant some explosives on him. That's about it.
You should definitely check out the Brotherhood after completing the water chip quest.
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AndrewArmstrong
Moderator - Psychonauts
Registered: 07/22/08
Posts: 365
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| Posted 07/30/10 at 04:57 AM | Reply with quote #9 |
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Mmm, planting an explosive. Glad that was in the game from the start! I'll do that next time I'm back.
Sadly I can't get the High-Res mode to work seemingly with the unofficial patch version of the game I'm using, bizarre but I'm too lazy to search anymore - and I guess my frustrations are just more "authentic" now 
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DexJackson
Registered: 02/11/11
Posts: 12
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| Posted 07/08/11 at 06:14 PM | Reply with quote #10 |
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What an oddly specific thread subject -- and on Fallout 1, no less!
I found that when I finally made it to The Hub in my first playthrough of the game (that is, the playthrough which didn't get anywhere near the late game-- such is the nature of old-school 90's CRPGs) that I was immersed in a city of post-apocolyptic quasi-Arabian Nights and neo-noir stylings. An interesting mesh of styles, further propogated by the various caravan companies, the situation between the police and organized crime element and, of course, the sheer size and scale of the place. Considering by that point, the world of Fallout had only been going on eighty-odd years, that's a remarkable achievement at creating a post-war civilization.
And even then, that's only the element of immersion. Of course, considering the visuals of the game, you had to have a healthy dose of imagination to picture it in such a way but for me, it was the audio that really helped me along. The same with Shady Sands and the Necropolis (and another area that is spoiler-heavy-- and technically the Necropolis is a spoiler, too). Then again, audio is a big thing for me games and supersedes graphics, story and even at times gameplay as well. Thankfully, it helped draw me into the tragic and broken -- if somewhat enigmatic -- world of Fallout and kept me going.
Now, specifically to do with The Hub itself, I found there weren't actually that many quests to do there. What there was however -- and in a quantity not too far from abundance -- were the little instant events that are rife throughout CRPGs to this day as well as piecemeal instances and side-jobs that could be done by speaking to the right people or being in the right place at the right time (in other words, when it was triggered to be so).
Even more interestingly, there was even more at stake in The Hub than there was in Junktown, considering the various interests that were invested in the town's working order and resources. The most prominent being the conflict between the police and Maltese Falcon owner (cannot remember his name, this was awhile ago), with the city's police being the first people you see who are armed to the teeth and could serious upset your physical well-being if you got funny with em'. At least, however, they're armed with reasonable weapons unlike the Falcon's thugs who are armed with deadlier weaponry though aren't good at using them (that I remember, anyway) and so put not just their enemies but themselves and bystanders in harm's way. Such is the life in a major post-apocalyptic trade hub, however.
To round it off, though I spent more of my time elsewhere in game, I found The Hub was a interesting idea that I'm actually kind of glad they decided to include in the game in a major way. It opened the doors for bigger and more expansive cities a just a under a century later in the game's timeline which gave plenty of time for such expansion to occur within fairly realistic economic terms and allowed the world of Fallout to be so much more than just a bunch of shantytowns and bandit hideouts as with most rest of post-apocolyptic fiction. Hell, I'd say that much of the more recent post-apocolyptic fiction landscape relies on such scale nowadays to keep interest going for the genre since otherwise it'd be terribly bland and dull and oh so very bleak without any real Human experience element whatsoever. And in some ways, some very strange ways, we have the Fallout series to thank for that.
Not bad for a game that almost never was...
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