Troika Games no longer exists

[dextermorgan]

Interestingly, all those slack-jawed anarchist faggots would most likely get insta-stomped in the dog-eat-dog world of true anarchy.

So yes, law and order are good for you.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

In the end more people will suffer and die because of factional warfare than if you'd erase them with a virus.

What factional warfare? Like the great war between Killian and Gizmo?

There's no prosperity or purpose in the Wasteland. Everyone has guns and everyone uses them.

No. Not everyone has guns and not everyone uses them. Most of guns in civilized towns are in the hands of law enforcement.

This will lead to centuries of suffering.

Yes, they will get bored like Tandi, we need to put them out of their misery!

If you have the means to change this and if you don't do anything instead, maybe that is evil.

If these people would find their life so horrible and unbearable that looking at it would be "evil", they would off themselves. Instead of that they are farming, having businesses, working, trading, seeking entertainment, etc. - living their own lives.
How about using a small army to wipe out the raiders instead of trying to turn everyone into mutants or trying to kill everyone off?
Anyway, have you seen the vault under the Cathedral? Are you seriously going to tell me that *this* is better than Shady Sands, Junktown, Brotherhood of Steel or The Hub?

 

[Klaz]

Fallout 2 isn't set in a world in "anarchy". Every city has a government of some sort (Even New Reno has the mob bosses... well, except Klamath, but they seem to be very peaceful), and they're more developed than the leaders of the cities of the first Fallout.

The president actually wanted to "decontaminate" the wasteland of mutants so the purebred remnants of the American government could have California back.

 

[Tycn]

Your interpretation of strife and suffering as something inherently bad/evil and fetishizing (yes I know, this word does not seem to exist, you get the point though) of "decent life" and prosperity seem almost pathological to me.

So... suffering isn't inherently bad?

 

[dextermorgan]

Fallout 2

Um, people are discussing Master, hello?

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Someone brought up Enclave and their good genocide plans.

 

[Klaz]

Um, people are discussing Master, hello?

Enclave was evil, since President just wanted annihilate every living thing by using virus (if I recall good), so good old Americans could take over the world.

In the end more people will suffer and die because of factional warfare than if you'd erase them with a virus. There's no prosperity or purpose in the Wasteland. Everyone has guns and everyone uses them. This will lead to centuries of suffering.

 

[JarlFrank]

Your interpretation of strife and suffering as something inherently bad/evil and fetishizing (yes I know, this word does not seem to exist, you get the point though) of "decent life" and prosperity seem almost pathological to me.

So... suffering isn't inherently bad?

To Catholics probably not.

 

[Cassidy]

You should let this thread die with dignity.

 

[visions]

Interestingly, all those slack-jawed anarchist faggots would most likely get insta-stomped in the dog-eat-dog world of true anarchy.

So yes, law and order are good for you.

Yeah, I sure remember strongly propagating anarchism or "true anarchy" here, whatever your definition of that might be. I have little interest in politics and I do not consider myself a serious anarchist (although I occasionally do get shivers down my spine when listening to Crass. Resorting to a cliche, I'd say my heart is anarchist, whereas my brain says anarchy on a large scale would never work).

And no, to most serious anarchists "true anarchy" would not constitute a dog-eat-dog world.

Anyway, to the point.

My post was half-serious (I mean, no serious post would cite the D&D alignment system now, would it? ) but what I was getting at, is that I find the idea that the lives of the people living in the Fallout wasteland would be completely meaningless and they would all be better off dead anyway, so killing them all would be the "right thing" to do, ridiculous. They would still have their joys and pleasures, and I don't think that the fact that their lives would be harsher and less comfortable than ours', would make them inherently worthless.

Especially if we take into account that in the context of human history, our lives would be the freakish exceptions. Does that mean that the lives of those who came before us and lived in harsher, less comfortable times, were completely worthless and they would have been better off dead anyway?

I don't think so and I think it would be terribly vain to claim that lives that don't have everything as comfortable as we do, are utterly pointless.

Your interpretation of strife and suffering as something inherently bad/evil and fetishizing (yes I know, this word does not seem to exist, you get the point though) of "decent life" and prosperity seem almost pathological to me.

So... suffering isn't inherently bad?

Not in my opinion. Suffering may make us stronger and is a completely valid aspect of life, which has it's function and can potentially lead to great things.

Could Kafka have written The Trial, without suffering in life? I doubt it.

Could Goya have painted this:

without suffering? Again, I doubt it.

Oh, and

To people who are not afraid of growth and change, probably not.

There, I fixed it for you.

 

[Tycn]

Suffering may make us stronger and is a completely valid aspect of life, which has it's function and can potentially lead to great things.

Sounds like the only benefit of suffering is the minimisation of further suffering (or causation of pleasure) through personal growth/contributions to humanity. So it's still inherently bad but occasionally something good may come of it.

 

[Silellak]

Oh God fucking damnit what have I done.

HAI GUYS HERE'S AN OLD VOLOURN POST LOLOL

 

[CrimHead]

1. And, i'm still 1. will always be 1. And, always sueprior to codexers and Tim "MMO" Cain.

wtf

 

[DwarvenFood]

So when will Troika announce that all this was a big publicity stunt ..

 

[DraQ]

@suffering:

The question isn't whether it is good or bad. The question is could we conceivably live without. And I'm not talking about "human/world whatever is corrupt and will always create suffering hurr durr", I'm talking about human ability to function in a suffering-free world. Absolute lack of suffering is simply way outside of human operational parameters.

You know what is currently as the cause behind rampant spread of allergies in modern world? Excessive cleanliness and lack of parasites. The question is not whether parasites are good or bad, the problem is that your immune system was never supposed to function free of parasitic threats, and the intricate network of dependencies, feedback loops and other relationships forming it has tendency of going haywire in such conditions, and go berserk on some stray grain of pollen making your blood pressure drop, your body swell, resulting in death from a number different causes including choking on your own mucus membranes or circulatory system failure.

All of this because cells that temper such berserk reactions happen to be the ones that combat parasites and are, in most civilized humans severely understimulated.

But immune system was never exclusively aimed at countering parasites and, isn't really tied to who we are. Our psyche, on the other hand has largely been built atop of suffering avoidance - good luck trying to pull that one from underneath our minds and not have them topple. As much as civilization is twisting us in unnatural ways (I'm not labelling them as bad or unwelcome, mind you, I'm just noting that they are not within our operational parameters and there are bound to be side effects, loss of stability and other fuck ups we won't escape short of redesigning our minds and our bodies or stagnating for at least several millennia), it all pales compared to fucking invalidating most of our deepest structures motivating us to do stuff.

There are also such things as our minds autocallibrating themselves to baseline happiness. You think you are happier than your ancestors tens of millenia ago, who ran around butt naked and dropped like flies from diseases, famine and injuries, based on how miserable you would be if put in their place? You are not. This is the same effect that is a basis of psychological addiction.

tl;dr
It's like that thing Agent Smith was talking about, except free of obnoxious pop-philosophy and pop-psychology.

back on (current) topic:
The Enclave was closest to "actual" evil, although it had close real life analogs to back it up.

The Master was much more interesting villain as his primary goal was definitely noble, it's just that price was too much to pay (overlooking the flaw, that is).
Wiping the cities and such was inevitable result of people predictably resisting and part of unacceptable price. Given that we are talking about the species that nearly wiped itself out with no outside help, it's hard to blame the Master, even as you stop him.

 

[visions]

@suffering:
There are also such things as our minds autocallibrating themselves to baseline happiness. You think you are happier than your ancestors tens of millenia ago, who ran around butt naked and dropped like flies from diseases, famine and injuries, based on how miserable you would be if put in their place? You are not. This is the same effect that is a basis of psychological addiction.

That's a very good point actually. The average person living in the wasteland would probably see his way of life as normal, the fact that his life lacks many comforts that we may take for granted, would be irrelevant for him, since he'd lack the point of comparison, and this kind of life would be the norm (as in "good for what it is") for him. Thought to write something similar also in my previous post, but couldn't be arsed to think about how to phrase it in English.

 

[Tycn]

You think you are happier than your ancestors tens of millenia ago, who ran around butt naked and dropped like flies from diseases, famine and injuries, based on how miserable you would be if put in their place? You are not.

Happiness and pleasure are quite distinct. Even if your happiness tends to gravitate towards baseline there's no arguing that catching the plague or suffering from radiation poisoning is an extremely unpleasant experience. Since these things are generally far less common today, it seems reasonable to suggest that life today is more pleasurable than it used to be. Plus longer life expectancy naturally leads to more happiness.

 

[Davaris]

Do you really think you can simplify real life nations/people into "good guys" and "villains"? And even if you really think so, how does that relate to fictional characters?

I am not arguing that at all. I am asking, "What is the motivation?"


To me, people who use the term "insanely evil", to describe their enemies, resemble the comic book characters, that they themselves are conjuring up. Of course the conjurers have their own motivations for doing this, which should also be fully explored.


If you are a leader and you want your followers to kill your ideological opponents, first you must dehumanize them in your followers' minds, with Universalist propaganda. If such psychological conditioning is done effectively and for long enough, your followers will not care what your enemy's motivation is and will kill and take from them with impunity.

As for the Master wiping out entire towns, how did he convince himself and his followers to do it? Did they all wake up one morning feeling "insanely evil", and then wipe out the towns? Or did the Master first brainwash himself and his followers into believing that the people in the targeted towns, were "insanely evil", or a threat to their continued existence - which is essentially the same thing.

You have to beware of Universalism, both the "good guys" and the "bad guys" are susceptible to it and use it to motivate their followers.

There are also claims that people were "exterminated", when transformed into Super Mutants. The problem with that is Super Mutants are born with unique personalities and the ability to interact with the world and with others. If nothing of the human they were created from remains, where did their personality, lingual ability and motor skills come from?

 

[Volourn]

I now rename Tim "MMO" Cain Tim "Eternal Dwarffriend" Cain. Welcome home, RPG Buddy.

 

[Crooked Bee]

just dont join Obsidian

Obsidian is like a cRPG cancer or something, absorbs all the good thats left in the genre and turns it into shit.

I'm sure they'd have you doing 'lite designing' in no time.

xD

 

[Konjad]

Digging dead threads up

 

[Spockrock]

this thread is glorious

 

[suejak]

Troika sure made a bunch of iffy games.

 

[TheNizzo]

the irony is palpable