-Thief as Noir

            It’s not rocket science to note that Thief: The Dark Project’s story is similar to the hard-boiled crime stories of classic noir films. Ken Levine, who worked on the initial story design for Thief: The Dark Project, acknowledged such in one of the Irrational Behavior podcasts. It’s akin to noting Half-Life 2’s story similarities to 1984—it’s an easy comparison to make.

            But, for fun, I will start here a series of posts drawing comparisons between Thief: The Dark Project’s story and those of noir films.

            This time, the film is Kiss Me Deadly. I recently watched it for the first time. Comparisons between its story and Thief’s aren’t across the board, but here are some (do note that there are spoilers below for both Thief and Kiss Me Deadly):

            -Mike Hammer is like Garrett: Both are the guy who comes upon a big opportunity, pursues it for the money, and ends up getting deep into something that is wider and graver. Both are also seedy antiheroes who are not scrupulous (Garrett a thief, Mike a crooked divorce investigator).

            -The cops / official investigators are like the Keepers: Both are shadowy organizations that work in the background and know more about what’s going on. In these cases, (spoilers) knowledge of the return of the Trickster (via prophecies) and knowledge of a… well, I won’t spoil that.

            -The Carver woman is loosely like Viktoria, in that she is a femme fatale who leads the Garrett / Hammer character further astray.

            -Don’t think there’s a comparison for the Trickster. The climactic moments from both could be compared, though…(won’t spoil them here)

            See? That’s all. I’m just having a little fun. I’ll be noting things like this with other noir films (as I already stated above). Next up I’d like to do The Maltese Falcon and then The Third Man—two films that I have seen, but not for a good while.

            Cheers! 

Me and Fallout 4

As Fallout 4 would not run on my PC, I was reduced to playing it on the PS4. At least I’m getting to play the game without it crashing after 10 seconds.

I’ve played a lot of it recently, and it’s great. Top-notch open world exploration: great visuals, sounds, locales, quests, and so on. I’d like to share some of my adventures from it here, and if I were playing it on my PC, with FRAPs, this would be easy. But I need to transfer all the necessary screenshots and videos from my PS4 to my PC in order to do that. That will happen…later.

For now: some more thoughts on Fallout 4.

The best thing from this game, for me, and same for Skyrim and Fallout 3, is exploring and discovering. The little adventures that just come up from me walking around, without necessarily following a quest. Recently, I headed towards the coast, and came across a lighthouse filled with Children of Atom (who are hostile in this game…). I then walked through the ruins of a quiet little coastal town. I even stopped at a church. The silence was broken by a Mirelurk Queen shooting up out of the ground. This scared me a lot, and, as is the case when I run into Deathclaws and Radscorpions, I ran for the nearest shelter. Here, it was the church. I ran up the stairs as I heard the beast stomping around below. Moments like this are some of the most memorable from these games. I feel a real sense of panic as I head for shelter, a colossal monster on my tail. Hearing it outside as I quiver in the shadows feels like something that was scripted, though it isn’t. It’s just something that happened as I wandered around. This is where these open-world games shine. My favorite ‘mode-of-play’ in Elder Scrolls and the recent Fallouts is to wander around and let adventure just happen: coming upon places, people (hostile or friendly), things, and so on.

Maybe I should just do a ‘Thoughts On’?

-Thoughts on Fallout 4-

With Fallout 4, Bethesda has created another fascinating world to explore, filled with adventure, characters, monsters, items, and stories. Like in Skyrim and Fallout 3, the visuals and audio are both excellent, and complement gameplay that gives players freedom to explore and discover as they wish, whether sticking to quests or not.

Unlike in previous open-world titles by Bethesda, Fallout 4’s player character speaks. The main storyline, which involves a missing person, a private eye, synthetic androids, and a shadowy organization, are more interesting than those in Bethesda’s other open-world games.

Even still, the greatest enjoyment of Fallout 4 lies in exploring its world unfettered by a main storyline. Players will get the most out of the game when they wander off with no set destination in mind, but chance upon people, places, and all kinds of adventure “waiting” to happen. You never know what might come next in the wastes of post-nuclear Boston, or “the Commonwealth” as it’s called within the gameworld. One of my most memorable escapades was when I journeyed off to the coast and discovered a lighthouse and a small coastal village, and had what was a quiet reverie on the beach interrupted by a large monster shooting up from the sand. This monster being well above my level, I fled.

Any single building or location you may come upon in the wasteland will have enemies, story, and items enough for an hour or two of gameplay. The stories you come across range from the macabre to the humorous. A ‘Hubris Comics’ building contains back-and-forth between staff on the casting of one of the female characters in a TV series of a comic book; an old shipyard was run by a man who tried to tame crab-like creatures called “mirelurks”, but failed at it (as his corpse indicates); another place known as the “Pickman Gallery” is not a gallery for art, but for dead bodies, and the artist is the resident psychopath. Anyone who has played an open-world Bethesda game knows the kind of ironic, humorous, and horrifying stories one will come upon in the different dungeons scattered across the overworld. Fallout 4’s world is a collection of sci-fi, drama and monster movie fiction, each location being like an episode from a Saturday morning sci-fi serial.

The characters, too, range from humorous to horrible. The Super Mutants speak lines made funny by their stupidly insincere voices. The various raiders and gangs throughout the wastes all curse and speak in sadistic and violent terms, as before in Fallout 3. Both these groups have bodies and body parts hanging up as wards to explorers such as yourself. There are the “Children of Atom”, a religious group who has conceived of atom as a world-creating god. Unlike in Fallout 3, the Children of Atom here are usually hostile towards the player-character. There is also the Brotherhood of Steel, a Fallout series mainstay who are a group of technology zealots, devoted to preserving and understanding the technology buried throughout the wastes. (This time, they have helicopter things and a huge zeppelin.)

In additions to these groups, there are the monsters. The post-nuclear monsters are truly horrible: giant scorpions are back (the Radscorpions), the menacing Deathclaw returns, the Mirelurks (crab and lobster-like creatures) are also back, as are Feral Ghouls (zombies) and various mutated insects. Each monster seems more powerful this time (or maybe it’s just me?). It’s no wonder most wastelands residents are crazy or violent. In a world filled with monsters such as these, how could one not be that way? (Of course, this is a game overworld. Game overworlds are known for having human beings and terrible monsters living in close proximity to one another.)

There are the walled cities, which are the only places of safety. These cities are built on the ruins of the pre-war world. One, "Diamondy City", is built on a baseball field (in which there is a merchant who insists that baseball was a game in which the players beat each other to death with bats). Another, “Goodneighbor”, is built around Boston’s old state house (the leader of which, wearing John Hancock’s once-on-display outfit, has dubbed himself “Hancock”). But even these relatively safe places are full of seedy and corrupt characters and places, each city rife with social commentary (like Diamond City’s conflict between a newspaper and the mayor).

Overall, Fallout 4’s post-nuclear Boston is a world that would turn even the most naïve optimist into a pessimist (or realist?). It is a world of monsters, psychopaths, of corruption, violence, ruin, struggle, where the weak live in fear of the powerful and constant decay thwarts attempts at progress. Not like our world at all. But, at least it’s a world one can run around freely in (until killed by the nearest monster or nut-job).

All the exploration in this world is driven by a role-playing game system that is more Fallout 3 than Skyrim. Each time you level up, you can spend one point on one of the six basic “SPECIAL” attributes (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Luck) or on a perk. These perks are gameplay buffs, and may increase inventory weight, improve weapon accuracy, and so on. They require certain of the base SPECIAL attributes to be at a certain level before they can be chosen. It’s a simple system, though I miss Skyrim’s feature whereby using a certain kind of weapon or trait would earn experience points for that one weapon or trait. I wish I could level up energy weapons as I use them, just as I could level up archery in Skyrim by using the bow, but alas—this feature is gone.

Most will be happy to hear that the weapon condition system is gone, so no more need to repair weapons. A crafting system is here, though, so you can craft new types of aid to use in combat, and mod weapons and armor. These systems are there for you to use, but you don’t have to use them. 

VATs is back, though trickier: in Fallout 3, the game paused when in VATs, but in Fallout 4, action proceeds, just in slow motion. Otherwise, it’s the same: select body parts to aim at, hit go, and watch the proceeding action in slow-motion.

Is there anything to be desired in Fallout 4? Well, incidental to its open-world design is the potential for bugs aplenty. These include quests not working, items floating in the air, the game crashing… and so on. Veterans of Bethesda’s open-world titles will be ready—if you are not such, ready yourself.

Bugs aside, I think Fallout 4 is an excellent game. It’s open-world Bethesda, which I love, and it’s done really well here. A fantastic entry in a great series.

*Note that the screenshots used in this post are from Gamespot.com's collection. I didn't include some I made myself because...well, playing Fallout 4 on the PS4, I have a few more hoops to get through to put them onto my PC and then onto this blog.