Sep 14, 2010 Fallout 3 Wanderers Edition (FWE) is a major gameplay overhaul that improves the challenge, immersion, depth of gameplay while emphasizing balance, choices, role-playing and fun. FWE integrates over. Fallout 3 Wanderers Edition. S.P.E.C.I.A.L's Are More Special. SPECIAL's are balanced to be more important, and to make choices between which attributed.

[WARNING: This post goes from talking about a mod for Fallout 3 to discussing political philosophy. If political philosophy is not your cup of tea, but light discussions on the conflicting drives of morality and survival are, please read the first half of this post. The second half might be offensive to some, and while I have no problems with people disagreeing with my philosophical ideas and ENCOURAGE you to read it even if you think it will be offensive, this is your warning.]

I wasn’t lying at the end of my last post. In between other obligations, I’ve begun playing Fallout 3 again. A heavily modded Fallout 3, true, but Fallout 3 none the less. I’m doing a run through with the The Wanderer’s Edition mod set, including other big mods such as Mort’s Mutant Mod, Project Beautiful, and the Weapon Mod Kit mod. The Capital Wastelands in this version is much harsher than that of the vanilla game. I am not only deriving enjoyment from the game itself, but from what I’m beginning to realize about my own nature as I become immersed in my character.

In Vanilla Fallout 3, I played a virtuous vigilante, whose goal was to rid the Wastelands of the corruption that plagued it. Raiders, slavers, the genocidal Enclave, Super Mutants, and all that fun stuff. I often turned down rewards or accepted quests for the sake of helping others rather than for any promise of rewards. Damocles (my vanilla Fallout 3 character) was an ideal for the Wasteland to strive after. He was the drifter cowboy, stopping in a town just long enough to solve their problems with the local bandits, before moving on to the next, the only reward being enough supplies to continue his lone journey. He didn’t need a reason to hunt down slavers, sadistic raiders, or the evil mercenaries of Talon Company. Damocles was a killer, but it was a harsh world and he was trying to make it safer. In the end, he was ready to sacrifice himself for the sake of all in the Wasteland to have a better life.

Total war saga: thrones of britannia download. Roland…doesn’t have the luxuries that Damocles had. Roland can’t afford to help for the sake of helping, can’t just give water to a beggar asking for clean water. His Wasteland experience is very different from Damocles. Let me list some of the major differences the Wanderer’s Edition brings to the game, some mechanical, some based on the differences in backstory.

Hunger, Thirst, Sleep: Damocles never had to worry about his hunger level, or how thirsty he was, or even if he was tired or full of energy. Food healed you, sure, but that was all it did. He didn’t have to drink simply to stay ALIVE. Food was the same as medicine, except not as effective. Roland does. This mod requires the player to keep track of not only health and Action Points, but to make sure the player character isn’t starving to death in the middle of a fire fight. Water is important, as thirst builds up the fastest. Alcohol won’t do the job and dirty water is DANGEROUS. This is post-nuclear apocalypse, after all. The water is irradiated and too much radiation will give you negative effects in combats, which will in turn reduce your chances for survival.

The game has beggars sitting outside major “cities,” begging for purified water or else they’re going to die. They are not exaggerating. If you tell them to find their own water or offer them dirty water, they will indeed die. In the vanilla version, giving water to these beggars nets you “Good” Karma. Damocles was free with his water. He was a super human who didn’t need to drink anything ever. Roland is a human and water is scarce. If he gives his purified water to the beggar, he’ll have to drink the irradiated water so he doesn’t die of thirst. That’s assuming he even HAS purified water on him. Giving these beggars water is no longer simply good or bad, it’s a question of survival. If Roland gives the man his clean water, he is, effectively, reducing his own survival chances. Every time Roland helps these people, he is doing it at a cost to his own benefit. THAT is selfless altruism. Roland’s choice isn’t easy.

This mechanic alters the player’s way of thinking. No longer is karma the driving force. Basic survival begins to make the selfless choices harder. When you are running low on water or medicine and you’re thirst meter is rising or you’re almost dead, and suddenly the concept of ownership begins to blur. Give a purified water to a beggar when you are thirsty yourself, only to go and steal one from the local bar because you can’t afford their extortionist prices. With Damocles, the idea of stealing water because I needed it was ridiculous. For Roland, the idea is quite sensible.

Weapons do higher damage: This set of mods makes weapons FAR more deadly than the Vanilla version. A raider with a machine gun can take my armored self in three seconds, even if I started at full health. This idea would be laughable to Damocles, even when all he wore was a duster and a cowboy hat. The damage reduction for that was something like twelve. Roland sports a nifty armored vault suit at sixteen damage reduction, and yet a prolonged gun fight will often leave him with no health. A simple knife can take half of Roland’s health away in one attack. Run out of ammo before the enemy is down and need to reload? Better hope you’re quick enough to get your weapon back up before he hits you with that super sledge.

Suddenly the idea of infiltrating a Raiders’ den and putting them all out of the Wastelands’ collective misery isn’t a simple action. For those who have played Fallout 3, do you remember Springvale Elementary? That early Raiders base near Megaton? It wasn’t too hard even for a low level gunslinger like Damocles. He went through a lot of ammo (at the time he didn’t have obscene stores for all weapons, so I had to switch weapons constantly), but there was never much threat. A few stimpacks were used to keep my health up, but they couldn’t kill me fast enough to really threaten my life.

Roland’s adventure into the Springvale Elementary was quite different. By the time he crawled out of his little scavenging trip, his fractured skull was giving him a concussion, his ribs were cracked, and one of his legs was broken. He was addicted to four different drugs, including Buffout (a drug that heals you immediately as well as increasing strength and endurance), Jet (a drug that increases action points), Morphine (allows the effects of crippled limbs to be ignored), and some other drug with a chemical name (damage resistant). Out of two hundred health, he had twenty five. His injuries meant sleeping wouldn’t cure him and might even result in a loss of health. He was carrying so much salvaged goods, it required a steady drip of Buffout to prevent him from being able to carry his treasure through the Wastelands back to Megaton.

(I enjoy Fallout 3’s system of encumbrance. When you are over-encumbered, you are unable to run or fast travel, having to leisurely stroll through the dangerous, unfriendly wastes. Factor in the broken leg, and you can imagine how slow that trip would be.)

Which leads nicely into another difference…

Stimpaks are rarer and do not instantly restore health: In Vanilla Fallout 3, using a stimpak will instantly restore your health by whatever amount it says. You can be close to death, go into your pipboy interface, take a few stimpaks, and be back to full health in a second. In late game, when Damocles was practically dripping stimpak’s into his blood through an IV, this meant even if he was losing some health, it wasn’t a danger.

The Wanderer’s Edition doesn’t do this. Stimpaks are much harder to find and more expensive in the economy of the mod. Even when you have a stimpak, it’s health restoration over time. If you are under attack from a melee opponent and about to die, a stimpak won’t save you. There is no way to get back to a high health, except for the highly addictive drug Buffout. Each use of the stimpak is a resource decision. “Is it better to use it now, when I have a pause in combat…or wait until I get a few shots in, then take it, then finish him off while I recover the health…How long do I have to wait before I can withstand a hit…”

Food doesn’t heal you in the mod. Drugs will, but then you risk the chance of getting addicted. Some drugs also come with negative side effects. Buffout I know makes turns much faster, which sounds better but can disorient you if you aren’t used to it. In Vanilla, all Buffout did was play with your stats.

Health is harder to recover: Not only due to the change in stimpaks. Beds used to be a way to recover from everything, even a concussion (wrap your heads around that one. Go to sleep to cure the concussion). Playing the mod, I assumed it still worked this way, so after a particularly rough fight with raiders, I found a bed that wasn’t stained with the blood of one of their mutilated victims and took a nap. I woke up, and my health was actually lower because Buffout had worn out. I felt well rested, but close to death with half my bones broken.

The sarcastic doctor wasn’t even sarcastic by the time I limped my broken body to his clinic and asked him to patch me up. So much for time healing all wounds.

Now, this might not seem that major of a change, but take a moment to consider the implications of having health be expensive to recover [Allow me to use my economics knowledge for a moment. You can either pay the doctor to heal you (fairly expensive) or use rare items to heal your wounds and restore your health. These items are free to obtain, but very expensive in use. In this world, these items sell for a LOT of bottle caps, the currency of the Wastelands. Every time you use one of these items, you are in fact losing more money than if you hiked back to a town and paid for healing. So while the items can be free to obtain, their is a high price in their actual use.] With the economics part of me now satisfied, the writer will continue. With Damocles, health became pointless. Enemies were either too powerful with my build or too weak. If they were too powerful, Damocles would be killed almost instantly. If they were too weak, he could stand there and let them shoot him, the duster his only protection, and his health would barely drop.

Roland loses health fast and it costs him a lot to get it back. When people ask him to go explore the Wasteland on their behalf, he can’t say “My pleasure.” It’s not that simple. He is FORCED to ask “What are you offering?” because every expedition is expensive. The line of what’s acceptable and what’s not begins to gray as cost of survival rises. What would be a righteous action for Damocles becomes a job for Roland. Raiders aren’t scum to be killed for the good of all, they’re people with goods Roland NEEDS.

Damocles grew up in a controlled Vault, Roland grew up in the Wastelands: One of the things I love about the Wanderer’s Edition is that it gives you the option to choose your background. In Vanilla, there is only one backstory for all your characters. You are the Lone Wanderer from Vault 101, the son of James, and spent your childhood being bullied by the Tunnel Snakes and being friends with Amata. It’s alright the first time, but after the first run, it just seems dull. The Wanderer’s Edition has a choice of backgrounds to pick from, with different benefits given depending what you chose.

Now, I suppose I should briefly explain what a Vault IS for those who never played any Fallout game. Prior to the Chinese invasion of the United States and the nuclear holocaust that followed, there was a company called Vault-Tec that built over one hundred “Vaults” across America. They advertised these Vaults as places to survive the nuclear holocaust and the fallout. In truth…well, many crimes have been committed in the name of science, right? Every Vault was a bit different, intending to study different reactions of their inhabitants. One of the vaults was deliberately built with a faulty door so that radiation would leak inside, causing all the inhabitants to turn into ghouls and…

Sorry, basically, the Vaults are a staple of the Fallout series. Vault 101 was designed with the purpose of never being opened again. It didn’t really work, but that’s another story. In short, Vault 101 was the very definition of a controlled environment where survival was assured and all Damocles had to worry about was what job he would be assigned.

I chose Wastelander for Roland’s backstory. From the moment he was born, he lived in the harsh, untamed, wilderness that had once been our nation’s capital. What does this mean? It means that he never was guaranteed a next meal, or even a next day. The mutated animals, the nihilistic sadistic raiders, the slavers, super mutants, Talon Company, cannibals, the Brotherhood Outcasts (who claim to be neutral, but killed Damocles’s dog for no reason. They’re total jerks), feral ghouls, Tenpenny’s men, no clean water, no agriculture, etc. etc. Every day must have been a struggle for a kid growing up in the Wastes. This isn’t the same as being a resident of Megaton or Rivet City or one of those other cities that serve as economic centers with communal defenses. This was a battleground where only the strong, smart, or lucky could survive.

Roland wouldn’t have had time for the Regulator’s ideals of justice, or the Brotherhood’s “Good Fight.” He’d be more worried about where he’d find the supplies he’d need to live in relative comfort for a little bit longer. Damocles never had to worry about where his food was coming from, which leaves him energy to be idealistic. He can get emotionally invested in the idea of a “Good Fight” or “Wasteland Justice.”

Fallout 3 Wanderers Edition Guide 2017

I’m sure there are more changes in this mod that I could use to point out the differences, but that’s not what this post is about (2,363 words and I’m only now getting to the point of this post). I didn’t compare the mod to Vanilla just to show what I’m playing. This mod gave me real choices. Choices that made me think.

Here is where I throw my thoughts into a philosophical discussion that has been going on for centuries. In political philosophy, there is the idea of the “State of Nature”. Now, there is no agreed definition for what the State of Nature is, but the debate as I understand it can be stated as such: “What is humanity and the individual human like without the constraints and support of society and the state?”

Is man naturally social? Will he strive to be accepted by others even without societal expectations dictating he do so? Is the state the cause of man’s morality, or man’s immorality? Is man naturally driven by his own desires for superiority, or is that a product of society? What, in a nutshell, is man’s true nature?

I mentioned in an earlier post that when I play games with choices, I normally play the good options. I never saw the appeal in being a jerk in a video game when the game allows you, sometimes even encourages you to do so. Part of the fun of being a jerk to the game is the sense that you are somehow breaking the game, getting away with something you shouldn’t be doing. If the game lets you do it, it feels almost as though it’s simply indulging my childish desire to misbehave.

Damocles was a good, righteous, honorable, (stupid, but that’s because the writing and plot was stupid), nice, helpful, (stupid), selfless character. Myst masterpiece edition download free. He traveled the Wastelands with the desire to help and create, not destroy. He lived outside of society, but was morally good.

However…as I explained above, his only conflicts were moral conflicts of society. He had no necessity to eat, to sleep, to drink. Health could be easily replenished and ammunition wasn’t scarce. It was almost as though he had never left comfortable society, where fewer people worry about where there next meal is coming from. A post-apocalyptic world and yet he still followed the moral code of a society that had been wiped out two hundred years in the past. He was…an impossibility.

When I began playing Roland, I intended to be good again. To help others and make the Wasteland a better place. By the time I made it to the first city of Megaton, I was tired, thirsty, desperately needed a place to sleep, and had almost no money on me. A bed was 120 bottle caps, which was almost my total amount. Certainly not enough to buy a meal and purified water. But my character was so thirsty.

I could drink from the sink or the toilet, suffering the irradiation (not to mention the humiliation)…or I could steal. I had my pride after all. I had paid for a room to sleep in, he already had my money. Moriarty (the owner of the saloon) surely wouldn’t miss ONE bottle of pure water.

The more I worried about where I was going to get my water, the more I felt myself being dragged inside Roland. It was easy to justify stealing water. Moriarty was rich and had already taken my money. He was rich because he had a guaranteed supply of food and water, as well as a shelter to call his own. I was poor. I had no bed, no food, no water, only my clothes and a gun.

So I stole the water. Within the first ten minutes, I had done what I had only ever accidentally done with Damocles. I had taken what was clearly another man’s possessions. I had no regrets about it, not because it wasn’t “real”, but because it was a simple question of survival. The concept of good and bad was lost to me.

As I continued the game, I found myself amusingly surprised at my choices. They were so different from Damocles. Once my very survival was threatened, the beggars asking me for water seemed more like lazy con artists than poor souls. You want my water? Do you know what I had to do to get this water? My karma meter stayed at a solid neutral, neither good nor bad. I was too busy worrying about costs of medicine and ammunition to worry about the moral implications of my actions. I stole and cheated to get by, though I justified it by saying I was only stealing from those who had a lot. I was more like Robin Hood than anything else. When I helped convince a junkie to quit his deadly habit, it wasn’t because I was concerned for him. I was thinking to myself “If he doesn’t need these drugs…I might be able to use them…”

Fallout Wanderer Edition

Raiders’ bases? Good places to find chems, medicine, and ammunition. Talon Company hold outs? Explosives are probably nearby. Old, ruined, neighborhood? Probably some useful salvage items to be gathered here. Megaton? Largest economic center nearby. I stopped thinking about the people or if it was right to take these goods that weren’t mine. Everything was focused on me, my health, and my survival.

I would say, based on my choices when immersed in the character of Roland, this is the State of Nature for man. Outside society, he is neither good nor evil. A popular concept in modern philosophy, the idea of relatively morality, but I feel that doesn’t quite hold the right connotations. Outside of society, man has no moral code, not simply a different one. Morality requires energy as does society. Government cannot exist in any meaningful state unless its people have some idea of where their next meal is coming from (Not entirely accurate of course, and I might come back to this idea in a later post…but for now, that woefully inadequate statement will have to suffice). If your next meal, if water, if even a place to REST is not secure, you will not have the energy to worry about what is right, what is legal, and what is socially acceptable.

Hobbes’s view on the State of Nature is this: During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.” (Leviathan, ch. XIII) While in this states, Hobbes says it is the natural right of a person to do anything he wills to survive, though the life of this person is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

On the surface, Hobbes’s view closely matches my own. However, from what I understand of Hobbes’s position, society is a solution to this wild, individualistic drive to survive, to tame the selfish nature of man and make him selfless with regard to the state and society. He believes this natural state of almost primal survival to cause one to be “brutish and nasty.”

Fallout Wanderer Song

If Hobbes was still alive today, I would challenge him on that point. As Roland, I was not doing all I could to survive. I was doing all I could do to survive and preserve my dignity as a person. I could have freely drank from the toilet, disgusting though that may be, and quenched my thirst. For those who would argue about germs and bacteria, I’ll point out the sink was clean enough, though irradiated. Still, a little radiation isn’t going to kill me right away, and I had grown up in the Wasteland, where everything is irradiated.

No, I stole the water not only to survive, but to survive as a person. I didn’t care about what the people of the town thought of me. If I did, I wouldn’t have stolen the water and suffered another night without having anything to drink. I cared about what I thought of myself. I couldn’t bring myself to take the free option because the cost would be my personal respect. While these people had water, I was drinking from their toilet and their sink like a dog. I needed water, yes, but I wasn’t willing to do that much.

Humans, by our very nature as sapient creatures, possess not only the will to survive but the desire to maintain our dignity. It is not merely enough for us to get by from day to day, but that we must be able to also hold our head up to others who would threaten to take away our self-respect. Good and bad are societal concepts, imposed on us by the state and the people we associate with. Survival and self-respect are individual concepts, driving and defined by each and everyone of us as individuals. Humans survive within the constraints of society yes, and many say we are a social animal. However, when it comes to day to day survival, the drive to live will put the individual at odds with the society, especially when the societal constraints are what threatens the individual’s chances of survival.

Some will argue that self-respect is also affected by societal influences. I disagree. Self-image is surely affected by society, and for many self-respect is also determined by self-image, at least to some degree. By its very nature though, self-respect MUST be individualistic. If you lack self-respect and let society determine your worth, you are also in many ways sacrificing your drive to survive, even if you might be increasing your chances at the same time. Seems contradictory, doesn’t it? I know. But think about it, tell me if you disagree, all that good stuff. Going into THAT topic in this post would be so far removed from morality and survival, and this post is already long enough.

I like when games make me think, not just of a moral choice, but of deeper philosophy. I especially love when they do this with game mechanics rather than cut scene plot exposition. The Wanderer’s Edition takes a good game and makes it GREAT. Can you afford to be selfless in a world where the very world is inhospitable? Can you rise above the Wasteland and retain your societal ideas, your ideals of what the world should be like? Or will you lose yourself in the need to survive, abandoning society morals and comforts for your own personal survival? It’s an interesting question, and one I think more games should explore. Too often, games separate their story from the actual mechanics, especially with the larger name games. Game play is fun, but doesn’t match the story being told. I’m not a programmer or an artist, but I can tell you that when you keep story and game play separate, what you are doing is keeping the medium from evolving beyond simple amusement. You are creating an airplane novel instead of a classic piece of literature. Something that will get you through an otherwise boring day, but which will lay forgotten when the next great novel is released.

One of these days, I’ll have to do a whole post simply dedicated to telling a story through game mechanics…I’ll add it to the growing list of cool topics that I will have to eventually get to.

So, that wasn’t very focused…still, if you managed to get through it, I have rewards for you! Professional writers about video games discussing a similar topic using the games Fallout: New Vegas and Red Dead Redemption!

Andrew Bell at the Escapist magazine wrote an excellent article discussing the modern political philosophies beneath the games Fallout: New Vegas and Red Dead Redemption, focusing on Hobbes’s and Rosseau’s ideas on the State of Nature. It’s well done and was part of the inspiration for this mess of a post. If you are at all interested in this topic, I suggest you check it out.

Also from the Escapist (What can I say, they have good stuff some times), a good song written by Miracle of Sound about Fallout 3. It motivated me to reinstall the game and go explore it once more.

Fallout 3 Wanderers Edition Guided

It’s getting late, and I’d like to get this post up before I forget about it. Hope you all enjoyed it, and it gave you something to think about. That’s what I strive for. Good night, all!

Fallout 3 Wanderers Edition Mod

~Faust Ivercourt