What's the general opinion on San Francisco?

[The Lemon]

Man, I really hate San Francisco in this game. I hate the aesthetic, I hate the questline. The Shi are excruciatingly boring; I actually like the idea of a chinese inspired Faction, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, they do nothing with the Chinese lore in Fallout, they just slap martial arts and dragons everywhere and call the head computer the "emperor".
I actually liked the hubologists, but their questline is basically exclusively designed to ♥♥♥♥ up your main quest and confuse you to no end. They tell you to kill Badger, who can help you get fue; later on, and then immediately tell you to kill the emperor, and once you do that, you kind of screw up every other option of getting fuel. (Beyond the weird low intelligence option with the Hubologist leader?) Not to mention I don't think you'd have any reason to believe you'd *need* fuel at the point at which you get those quests because you haven't been informed of where the village people are at that point or that you'd need the oil tanker to get to them. I guess that's just my fault for picking the Hubologist faction, but idk man, it's a roleplaying game! Why make one option just "get basically softlocked without google" and the other one just "the objectively correct and helpful option". I like playing evil sometimes. I really find San Francisco to be such a soul sucking, tedious way to finish a game that I otherwise found to be pretty fun. New Reno is such an amazing city and I wish they could've captured that same magic with any of the other towns in the game.

Now, rant aside, I was wondering your thoughts. I may be biased coming from a Hubologist point of view, but I felt like people that wanted to experience all the cult stuff still deserved a fair shake at finishing the main quest. But yeah, just curious!

[The Chosen Chad]

The hubologist gives you the fuel, you just have to ask ASH-9 I think it was his name or something after killing the emperor, thats how I did in my low intelligence run I think.
You can also just hack the computer in the north area if you help the Shi or kill them.
You can also, infiltrate and talk to the Emperor then giving yourself the fuel iirc.

Edit : So i just checked, there is a lot ways to get fuel if you side with the Hubologist, one of them got an alternative to Badger, there is Dave that helps you get you fuel.

Originally posted by The Lemon:

Man, I really hate San Francisco in this game.

Same, but for the different reason, I like the aesthetic and atmosphere. I just wish we had more questline that actually went further than just faction A vs B. Like helping the local farmers, or meeting a band of Mercenaries and the local Caravans, helping the doctor, get some lore bits with everything, seeing the local crime organisation. Simply put, if they put the same care like they did on the Hub or NCR it would've been great.

I also love the fact that Jeet Kun Do, a martial art that encourage adaptation in fight is the conservative school for the locals. And that Lau Pan is the bad guy because he wants to incorporate firearms in his CQC technics. His fighting style is much closer to the philosophy of Jeet Kun Do and its a style that can save people in the wastes where every bullets count and you have to use your whole body in a fight to survive.
The problem here, is that all of what I said is never properly said, its implied but the game treats Lau Pan as the obvious bad guy, who has more common ground with a gang leader than an actual martial artist.

I also hate that lore wise, SF as a whole makes no sense at all. Since they are a few days of travelling from the Military Base. Which in the first Fallout was where Mutants were created and was filled with all sorts of creature. It would've mean that a big city like SF would've been a prime target for the Master, the Hub was nearly destroyed by the Master's Army and it was at the otherside of the map. So either SF had ancient Chiense knowledge and warfare and made the Master and his army his ♥♥♥♥♥.... Or they just didnt think this through and wanted a last hub before going to the Oil Rig and San Francisco fits the thing.

Not to mention I don't think you'd have any reason to believe you'd *need* fuel at the point at which you get those quests because you haven't been informed of where the village people are at that point or that you'd need the oil tanker to get to them.

Pretty sure that the Hubologist wants the fuel and Vertibird plans for their rocket, or you missed that.
Maybe its true for the unpatched version of Fallout 2, but I usually come in San Francisco "early" when I learn the location from Gorris (he points the Military Base which I clear and in one of the tents there is a map that points to San Francisco). And I never had the weird prompts that said "where is my village ???"

I guess that's just my fault for picking the Hubologist faction, but idk man, it's a roleplaying game! Why make one option just "get basically softlocked without google" and the other one just "the objectively correct and helpful option".

A big problem of San Francisco thats true, there is the obvious bad guys and the obvious good guys. Its not like the really good sub plot and invisible war between Vault City, New Reno and NCR where there is scheming and backstabing.
San Francisco was an after thought and clearly not finished or even that well designed.

[The Lemon]

Those two options you mentioned for getting the fuel are exactly what bothered me so much.

The badger alternative, Dave I think, can’t get fuel for your ship if you kill the emperor. Which is strange to me, because as I said before, I think the indication for needing to get an oil tanker is completely absent from the Hubologist run. This is one of those options you screw over when you just do what the Hubologists ask.

The other option, the one I did, was to be dumb and talk to the leader, who manages to procure everything you need to leave immediately. And what I hate about this is that it makes no sense. There’s no way to reasonably discover this without already being low intelligence, and AHS-9 is such an unremorseful ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that there’s no way in hell you’d think he would gamebreakingly immediately get you everything you need like you’re a prince. This bugged me so much because I hated using google in Fallout 2; I was only truly having fun when I was learning as I went along and sort of winging it, because I feel like that’s how the early games were meant to be played. But ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, to find out you a) need the oil tanker and b) can only get the fuel with low intelligence you’d need to either be really lucky or just waltz in with the right stuff.

Also, I agree on the side quest thing. I care less about the one sided ness of issues because I enjoy being objectively evil, but I feel like Lo Pan shouldn’t have been a clownishly evil bad guy but instead a legit ideological foe for the Dragon. That way, the evil option of killing both and robbing the town of every hope and dream they have is still available XD and the side quests are just more intriguing that way.

[Johnny Casey]

With the excessive amount of pop-culture references, I'm positive that the developers made this location and its settings solely for the purpose of satisfying their oriental fantasy, just like how Warcraft III established a lore about a padaren race because of one of the developers obsession with pandas.

[The Chosen Chad]

To get the fuel there is in total 8 ways to get the fuel, and 4 of them are designed for a Hubologist :

- Rescue Badger's girlfriend from the monsters in the tanker's hold, then ask him to hack the Emperor and transfer the fuel (this results in Badger's death at the hands of Shi enforcers).
- If the player passes a difficult speech check, Ken Lee provides the player with access to the Emperor[1] without requiring the player to complete any quests. Once talking to him, tell him directly that fuel is required, and he will mention something to the effect that he can tell that the player character is a good, trustworthy person, and will then give the password to the emperor, and tell that the force field in the next room blocking the Emperor will be disabled. When actually going into the next room, the force field has not been disabled, possibly due to a glitch, thus the field will have to be repaired in order to get by. There will be no hostilities if it is already been cleared by Ken Lee. Fiddle around with the computer a bit, and the fuel will be transferred to the tanker.
- If Ken Lee does not trust the Chosen One when asking him for fuel, as mentioned in the previous scenario, he will give out a quest to retrieve Vertibird plans and bring them to Dr. Wong Yi Tze. Once they are in the possession, bring them to the doctor and one can get the fuel.
- Hack the Emperor.
- Trade a suit of hardened power armor to Dr. Jing Tie Gahng in the Steel Palace for fuel.
-If playing on the dark side, killed Badger for Hubologists and transferred fuel to the shuttle, there is still a way to complete the quest: hack the computer terminal in Dr. Jing Tie Gahng's science lab. This should be done before killing Shi Emperor, otherwise the computer will not work. In this case, the only chance to get the fuel may be to lower Intelligence by using Mentats and then wait for 24 hours. Then talk to AHS-9.
-Another way to get fuel is to go to the room in the south with the scientists in it, and hack into one of the computers. 5000 XP is gained as well.
-If the player joined the Hubologists, then Dave Handy can be convinced to hack the Shi databases to divert the fuel after choosing between two options relating to how Vikki Goldman reacts upon being informed about his feelings for her.

There is being objectively evil and being a scumbag, and there is how the game portrays "evil".
I prefer the game letting you be an agent of chaos and provock havock in the waste if you wish to, and doing usefull evil like contract killing, slavery or other jolly stuff you know. Vault City is the prime exemple of that.

Originally posted by Johnny Casey:

With the excessive amount of pop-culture references, I'm positive that the developers made this location and its settings solely for the purpose of satisfying their oriental fantasy, just like how Warcraft III established a lore about a padaren race because of one of the developers obsession with pandas.

I feel like its still more in line with what the first fallout did in that sense, the eastern and bizarre atmosphere of San Francisco resonates with settlements like the Shady Sands and the Hub with their indian/middle eastern influence. Pop Culture aside, SF would've been great if more worked was put into it imo

[The Lemon]

Originally posted by John Cassidy Joestar:

To get the fuel there is in total 8 ways to get the fuel, and 4 of them are designed for a Hubologist :

- Rescue Badger's girlfriend from the monsters in the tanker's hold, then ask him to hack the Emperor and transfer the fuel (this results in Badger's death at the hands of Shi enforcers).
- If the player passes a difficult speech check, Ken Lee provides the player with access to the Emperor[1] without requiring the player to complete any quests. Once talking to him, tell him directly that fuel is required, and he will mention something to the effect that he can tell that the player character is a good, trustworthy person, and will then give the password to the emperor, and tell that the force field in the next room blocking the Emperor will be disabled. When actually going into the next room, the force field has not been disabled, possibly due to a glitch, thus the field will have to be repaired in order to get by. There will be no hostilities if it is already been cleared by Ken Lee. Fiddle around with the computer a bit, and the fuel will be transferred to the tanker.
- If Ken Lee does not trust the Chosen One when asking him for fuel, as mentioned in the previous scenario, he will give out a quest to retrieve Vertibird plans and bring them to Dr. Wong Yi Tze. Once they are in the possession, bring them to the doctor and one can get the fuel.
- Hack the Emperor.
- Trade a suit of hardened power armor to Dr. Jing Tie Gahng in the Steel Palace for fuel.
-If playing on the dark side, killed Badger for Hubologists and transferred fuel to the shuttle, there is still a way to complete the quest: hack the computer terminal in Dr. Jing Tie Gahng's science lab. This should be done before killing Shi Emperor, otherwise the computer will not work. In this case, the only chance to get the fuel may be to lower Intelligence by using Mentats and then wait for 24 hours. Then talk to AHS-9.
-Another way to get fuel is to go to the room in the south with the scientists in it, and hack into one of the computers. 5000 XP is gained as well.
-If the player joined the Hubologists, then Dave Handy can be convinced to hack the Shi databases to divert the fuel after choosing between two options relating to how Vikki Goldman reacts upon being informed about his feelings for her.

There is being objectively evil and being a scumbag, and there is how the game portrays "evil".
I prefer the game letting you be an agent of chaos and provock havock in the waste if you wish to, and doing usefull evil like contract killing, slavery or other jolly stuff you know. Vault City is the prime exemple of that.

Originally posted by Johnny Casey:

With the excessive amount of pop-culture references, I'm positive that the developers made this location and its settings solely for the purpose of satisfying their oriental fantasy, just like how Warcraft III established a lore about a padaren race because of one of the developers obsession with pandas.

I feel like its still more in line with what the first fallout did in that sense, the eastern and bizarre atmosphere of San Francisco resonates with settlements like the Shady Sands and the Hub with their indian/middle eastern influence. Pop Culture aside, SF would've been great if more worked was put into it imo

I'm not exactly denying that there's plenty of ways to get the info while still siding with the hubologists, my issues are more just with sequencing. Again, you get into the hubologists, and you have two quests instantly:
1. Kill badger.
2. Kill the emperor.

After doing both immediately, I was stuck. The problem is that if you have no knowledge of the oil tanker and its necessity beforehand, you're probably just going to kill the emperor. And that screws *everything* up. For a game that usually has pretty good progression, this feels like an intentional trap. For ease of breakdown, I'll refer to each of the plans you posted by number:

1. Badgers Gf
2. Speech Check
3. Vertibird Plans Trade
4. Hack emperor.
5. Hardened Power Armor Trade
6. Computer Terminal
7. Dave Handy
8. Low int option

Killing the emperor and badger, as the hubologists instruct, cancels out all but one of these. Badger can't do a favor for you, 2, 3, 5, and 6 all require nonhostile Shi members. The vertibird plans one I actually could have done, but the problem is that the hubologists *don't tell you about needing fuel* so the Shi were already hostile by the time I figured out (through google) that I needed fuel. Obviously, you can't hack the emperor twice and Dave Handy can't hack the emperor if you've already killed him. Which leaves only the low int option, which is what I ended up doing through google. That's why I think the quest is poorly designed; the game punishes you with weirdly staged quests if you try to go the evil route, witholds information, and then if you miraculously figure out what you need, you've already ♥♥♥♥♥♥ over every possible avenue. Don't get me wrong, I actually really dig this game, but the mainline quest of san fransisco just really irked me.

This is, of course, in addition to both of y’all’s points; I dislike the unnecessarily orientalist aesthetic and the complete lack of attention to any side questing. The main quest part is what ruined my experience, and I want you to see my point there, but looking at it objectively, it's not too detrimental to the quality of the region, which is where the prior aspects come in.

[The Chosen Chad]

I always hack the Emperor before "killing" him, so I never was in this situation lol

I absolutely get what you mean however, it is very badly designed and I could've been stuck in this situation too if I hadnt got lucky to spec in Science early to get Skynet.

Its a general agreement in the community that SF needs a rework. If there is a ever an enhanced edition remake, SF would be the first to be rebuild from the ground up. Its the only location that feels like that.

[The Lemon]

Originally posted by John Cassidy Joestar:

I always hack the Emperor before "killing" him, so I never was in this situation lol

I absolutely get what you mean however, it is very badly designed and I could've been stuck in this situation too if I hadnt got lucky to spec in Science early to get Skynet.

Its a general agreement in the community that SF needs a rework. If there is a ever an enhanced edition remake, SF would be the first to be rebuild from the ground up. Its the only location that feels like that.

I think the main thing is that most people don't run into this problem because after the first playthrough you already know what you need. However, going in blind is what ruined this for me so I'd love to see some sort of rework in the future :P

And I agree, I think it's the only location that could use a full rebuild, especially due to it being sort of the "final destination" of the game behind the Oil Rig.

[Dallas S]

My comment in this post got deleted... Wut.. it wasn't even offensive or inflammatory, I was just commenting on the topic.

[The Lemon]

Originally posted by Psychotron69666:

My comment in this post got deleted... Wut.. it wasn't even offensive or inflammatory, I was just commenting on the topic.

I never got a notification for it or anything. Are you sure you didn't just forget to post it, or there was some internet issue?

[Jrdotan]

Originally posted by The Lemon:

Man, I really hate San Francisco in this game. I hate the aesthetic, I hate the questline. The Shi are excruciatingly boring; I actually like the idea of a chinese inspired Faction, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, they do nothing with the Chinese lore in Fallout, they just slap martial arts and dragons everywhere and call the head computer the "emperor".
I actually liked the hubologists, but their questline is basically exclusively designed to ♥♥♥♥ up your main quest and confuse you to no end. They tell you to kill Badger, who can help you get fue; later on, and then immediately tell you to kill the emperor, and once you do that, you kind of screw up every other option of getting fuel. (Beyond the weird low intelligence option with the Hubologist leader?) Not to mention I don't think you'd have any reason to believe you'd *need* fuel at the point at which you get those quests because you haven't been informed of where the village people are at that point or that you'd need the oil tanker to get to them. I guess that's just my fault for picking the Hubologist faction, but idk man, it's a roleplaying game! Why make one option just "get basically softlocked without google" and the other one just "the objectively correct and helpful option". I like playing evil sometimes. I really find San Francisco to be such a soul sucking, tedious way to finish a game that I otherwise found to be pretty fun. New Reno is such an amazing city and I wish they could've captured that same magic with any of the other towns in the game.

Now, rant aside, I was wondering your thoughts. I may be biased coming from a Hubologist point of view, but I felt like people that wanted to experience all the cult stuff still deserved a fair shake at finishing the main quest. But yeah, just curious!

Ahs9 thinks ken lee is the emperor, so you can end up the quest by just killing him.