Title: Dead World
Author: Lalzui
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure/Suspense
Fandom: Dead World/Prototype(no Prototype 2, from what I can tell)
Pairings: Not sure.
Chapters: 36
Words: 465,000
Updated: April 6th, 2018
Published: Oct 12, 2012
Status: Work in Progress
Summary: He had been captured; Alex Mercer knew that much was obvious. But if that was the case, why had his captors just left him there without security? How had he ended up in a bunker buried in some kind of giant desert? Where was everyone? And when the hell did bottlecaps become currency?
Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8601250/1/A-Dead-World

I searched around the forums. I searched again. I skimmed some more.

And for some absurd fucking reason, this wasn't posted yet.

Okay, I admit, I might be a bit hasty in posting a story that's only 61 thousand words, but frankly, this is awsome and unless it suddenly takes a nosedive in quality that makes it absolute trash, I rate it minimum 4/5. Or maybe it's just me giving favortism because it's a Fallout xover done at least somewhat right.

Meh.

Anyway, the regulars are good; good grammar, no glaring spelling mistakes. Characterization is great and fun, and I love the creation of the various factions, even if they aren't very explored yet.

The plot is still a little toddler at the moment, but it's growing slowly and surely. Alex is interacting with other humans in the fucked up future... I'm not sure what else to say.

4/5, and only because the plot hasn't reared its head yet.



Checked by Minion, February 11, 2017
Yes, it's still work in progress.

 

It was posted in the Other Fandoms Almost Recommendable thread six months ago.

The trick for searching for fics, youtube videos, and I assume imgurs, is to search for just the ID number. eg. I put 8601250 into the DLP search box and it immediately shows me every post which links to A Dead World.

 

Sweet, another Prototype fic by Laluzi. She did After the Fires Fade, a pure Prototype fic I recommended a while ago and she generally doesn't try to humanise Mercer much, which is is rare in this fandom. I'll have to read this one.

 

A few points to consider:

First, its decently written from a technical level. Not one bit of inspired prose to be found, but also I was never taken out of the story by bad grammar, sentence construction, or the like.

Second, although there are many women who can write male characters well (and vice versa), this author is not one of them. There are a large number of instances of childish, uncertain, and angsty behavior on the main character's part that make him seem to be roughly 13 years old. Things like melodramatically shoving his hands in his pockets and scowling at the ground, being cowed by the author's Fallout playthrough self-insert's talkative nature, etc.

Lastly, the story is 61k words in and there's not a glimmer of plot to be seen. The author's biggest story is 132k, sure, but her longest complete story is only 7k. The chance of this story getting completed is virtually nil.

Almost recommended for sure. Not as terrible as most fanfiction, but not quite library status either. 3/5.

 

I've been reading this one for a while, and I really enjoy it. The characterization is spot-on from the games, for the characters that had character in their game, and it's quite well written. One of my favorite active stories right now.

Personally, I rate it a solid 5/5, but maybe I'm just easier to please given how much I adore both Prototype and New Vegas and how hard it is to find quality fics of either.

 

I remember dropping it a while ago for similar reasons.

 

3/5. Story is decent, but damn if the author doesn't manage to say fuck all in as many words as possible. Definitely not a subscriber to the 'less is more' theory.

 

To be fair, Alex being a ridiculous edgelord is basically true to Prototype. It can be a bother sometimes, but a bigger issue for me is that he's pretty much a blanket solution to what are supposed to be challenges otherwise.

Still, the characterisation and writing overall is enjoyable, and there's precious few New Vegas (or for that matter, Fallout in general) fanfictions that I can say this about. For now I'd give this a 3/5.

 

It's pretty good, I have similar complaints about Alex's general edgy and bitchiness but it's handle well 4/5

 

I only know Prototype through crossovers, but it feels perfect for them. This was the first I came across, I think - then the Familiar of Zero, Spider Man, and Mass Effect ones were suddenly of interest.

Mercer's a bit of a whiny cunt at times, and this story meanders a hell of a lot without accomplishing what it promises, but it's still enjoyable enough that it got me reading a whole new fandom, and that takes some doing. My biggest complaint would probably be that he comes across as too human in a very juvenile, inconsistent way which reeks of the author intruding on the character when they should be taking a step back to show us something exquisitely alien.

The writing is pretty mediocre. It's not full of errors; it's just not particularly elegant.

One thing I can say is that this leaves me with a craving for playing Fallout which I haven't felt since abandoning Fallout 4 in disgust a couple of hours in. The worlds also mesh pretty well; I can imagine coming across Mercer in a tube as a cameo buried at the bottom of a Vault in-game.

The Courier is a bit...eh. In video games fanfiction where you can create your own character, such as Fallout, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Skyrim, etcetera, I really dislike having a random or SI game protagonist created by the author wandering around in addition to whoever our protagonist is. Whether they act as a deuteragonist or are just present in the background, I find it intrusive as all hell. I vastly prefer it when our new protagonist just replaces them outright. It's neater.

As this is at a massive 450k+ words, I'm fairly sure I'm going to get bored well before I get to the end. That puts me in a tricky spot for rating it. I do highly recommend reading this for anyone with even a passing interest in either of the two fandoms. Very highly. But all the issues hig
highlighted above bring the score down a bit for me.

(we apparently have a duplicate thread, too)

3/5

 

3-3.5/5 is a good score for this. It meanders and bloats word count far too much, but it is quite fun in places, and I feel that it manages to capture the spirit of New Vegas even with all the issues that others have pointed out. Mercer fits well enough into the setting, being an inhuman monster, and the characters that are introduced all have their own distinct voices, which is great, but the story spends far too much time on Mercer and Cain angsting and moaning.

If you enjoyed the first Prototype, or want a story that manages to catch that spark that made New Vegas great, you will probably like this. Just be ready for a good fifth of it to be puttering around accomplishing very little in the way of storytelling.