I've finally gained the confidence in myself to write a review on something I feel could have the right to express my feelings on. I also learned what ticks you people right the hell out, though I'm sure in that category I have allot to learn.
So anyways, the reason my attention is brought to Bethesda Softworks is not just because I've been quiet entertained with Fallout 3, even Oblivion, but I feel the studio is getting a false sense of accomplishment, even if Fallout 3 sold like hot cakes if cake where the currency in a fallen society after a nuclear apocalypse.
See, even with Fallout 3's leaps and bounds of improvement over Oblivion, it's still undermined by the fact many, if not all PC players, only get the most out of the game with little to excessive amounts of mods, patches, add-ons and so on. The Bethesda games never stands on their own very wall at all, especially Oblivion. Even after modifying the crap out of Oblivion, it was still wobbly and barely held together, its limbs falling off at the seams, screams of agony conveyed through poorly written, broken dialogue trees.
Fallout 3 stood on it's own pretty well, but give the right tweaks and it has the potential of being a very impressive game. However, sometimes the mods are absolutely necessary, best example being that Fallout 3 for PC has no zoom-in/zoom-out feature for scopes, at all! None! One fixed distance, and that's it. The scroll button on the mouse isn't even being saved for anything! It's just sitting there, waiting patiently in the control settings, only to bulge its eyes out in shock when it sees Fallout 3 leave the train station without it.
But my argument is also a selling point, as I've gotten more fun out of the game with mods then I ever thought possible. Some of the mods for Fallout 3 are inspiring, impressive and inventive, especially some of the radio mods. I think most of us would agree hearing Butcher Pete loses its charm after the bizzilionth time. Mind you, the soundtrack's great, but painfully monotonous and yet on one side of the argument I can't blame them. They could've stuffed the radio feature to the gills with chart destroying one-hit-wonders, but that'd be very expensive. However, the other side of the debate is there are many mods I found that had large lists of dirt cheap songs their staff completely missed out on, many in the public domain, so the cost friendly excuse only goes so far.
While I'm on the topic, I think my favorite radio mod has to be one called Existence. It's a charming radio station run by an AI, making it possible to bypass crappy fan voice acting all together by using a computer's voice. The host's lines are chillingly cold and spooky, while cutting to the core of the human condition, not even in a cheesy "yeah, we've heard it" kind of way. You start to develop a real opinion on the character after listening to him for a while, not like 3Dog's "I'm the cool, edgy, radio rebel, with liberal ideals!"
The AI will occasionally challenge itself and you with random spark of intellectual moments, grasping at straws with what little it knows, while giving you vague bits of his background. What won me over was this station also comes with optional quests to unlock more songs...
Anyways, back to the review. Does a game that needs help from fan made content be really considered a good game? I mean, sure Fallout 3 is pretty good on its own, but just pretty good, seemingly lacking in another level of content. But the right mods fill in the gaps quiet nicely! But that's another problem, as like the sandbox genre, mods lack direction. What one person thinks adds many exciting and interesting elements, another will find fruitless and without purpose.
I for one look for the most practical mods, like the need for sleep, food and water, or smokeable cigarettes, but furthermore, mods that add tactical elements, like crippling limbs, losing blood in the form of health after being hit with bullets, varying from different kinds of weapons and ammo used, and being knocked over when hit with large explosions, stuff like that. But someone who's more the Halo type will find these kinds of mods stupid and would rather have a mod that gave all the women in Fallout D cup breasts. (Don't get your panties in a knot, I'm just poking fun, I play Halo too... sometimes... due to lack of options)
In my opinion, the staff of Bethesda Softworks needs to look into mods like the ones I find adds more immersion and try to incorporate them into future games. It's obvious they're trying very hard to get more elements of gameplay with every new game and I think it's a promising sign they made such a vast improvement since Oblivion, not to mention they do give a sense of willingness to improve themselves. But just don't let the success go to their heads! And above all, for god sake, improve the conversations. I mean, Fallout 3's bots at least look a little into it when they talk to you, but the utter lack of dialogue and personalities makes it less exciting to talk to other residence.
What I loved about adventure games was you could have whole conversations with random people, that had absolutely nothing to do with any quest or plot, they're just there to have fun, weird, unique conversations with. This would add so much more variety to that pesky role playing element the Beth team is suppose to be reinforcing.
So, let me leave you with this final thought, I'd also love to see a multilayer ad-on. I mean, the Fallout 3 sandbox is so huge, it's just begging for co-op! Think of it, just disable VATS (it's a crutch anyway) and modify how you talk to the bots so the game doesn't freeze with creepy, unbudging eye contact (which also need to be improved), you could let dozens of players wander aimlessly on your server! And to keep it balanced, use a level cap, so everyone is default at lv.20 or so when they spawn in, start everyone with a few basic weapons, some stimpacks and everything else like armor, rations, misc, must be scavenged upon spawning, and may be looted off the corpse when dying, only getting the default equipment upon respawn.
Think how cool it'd be to run into a random encounter with an actual player, get into a fight with him/her, then assaulted by a hoard of Super Mutants that you and the guest player must fend off together, just to survive! Then being left with the moral decision later of either killing said guest, or letting him/her live out of gratitude. It's be like a free mmorp-.... oh... wait... that's why they didn't do that already.
On that note, I hope you enjoyed my thoughts... and Planet Fallout sucks.
EDIT: Fixed some grammatical errors. Only found two, not bad for something I wrote at 4am.
So anyways, the reason my attention is brought to Bethesda Softworks is not just because I've been quiet entertained with Fallout 3, even Oblivion, but I feel the studio is getting a false sense of accomplishment, even if Fallout 3 sold like hot cakes if cake where the currency in a fallen society after a nuclear apocalypse.
See, even with Fallout 3's leaps and bounds of improvement over Oblivion, it's still undermined by the fact many, if not all PC players, only get the most out of the game with little to excessive amounts of mods, patches, add-ons and so on. The Bethesda games never stands on their own very wall at all, especially Oblivion. Even after modifying the crap out of Oblivion, it was still wobbly and barely held together, its limbs falling off at the seams, screams of agony conveyed through poorly written, broken dialogue trees.
Fallout 3 stood on it's own pretty well, but give the right tweaks and it has the potential of being a very impressive game. However, sometimes the mods are absolutely necessary, best example being that Fallout 3 for PC has no zoom-in/zoom-out feature for scopes, at all! None! One fixed distance, and that's it. The scroll button on the mouse isn't even being saved for anything! It's just sitting there, waiting patiently in the control settings, only to bulge its eyes out in shock when it sees Fallout 3 leave the train station without it.
But my argument is also a selling point, as I've gotten more fun out of the game with mods then I ever thought possible. Some of the mods for Fallout 3 are inspiring, impressive and inventive, especially some of the radio mods. I think most of us would agree hearing Butcher Pete loses its charm after the bizzilionth time. Mind you, the soundtrack's great, but painfully monotonous and yet on one side of the argument I can't blame them. They could've stuffed the radio feature to the gills with chart destroying one-hit-wonders, but that'd be very expensive. However, the other side of the debate is there are many mods I found that had large lists of dirt cheap songs their staff completely missed out on, many in the public domain, so the cost friendly excuse only goes so far.
While I'm on the topic, I think my favorite radio mod has to be one called Existence. It's a charming radio station run by an AI, making it possible to bypass crappy fan voice acting all together by using a computer's voice. The host's lines are chillingly cold and spooky, while cutting to the core of the human condition, not even in a cheesy "yeah, we've heard it" kind of way. You start to develop a real opinion on the character after listening to him for a while, not like 3Dog's "I'm the cool, edgy, radio rebel, with liberal ideals!"
The AI will occasionally challenge itself and you with random spark of intellectual moments, grasping at straws with what little it knows, while giving you vague bits of his background. What won me over was this station also comes with optional quests to unlock more songs...
Anyways, back to the review. Does a game that needs help from fan made content be really considered a good game? I mean, sure Fallout 3 is pretty good on its own, but just pretty good, seemingly lacking in another level of content. But the right mods fill in the gaps quiet nicely! But that's another problem, as like the sandbox genre, mods lack direction. What one person thinks adds many exciting and interesting elements, another will find fruitless and without purpose.
I for one look for the most practical mods, like the need for sleep, food and water, or smokeable cigarettes, but furthermore, mods that add tactical elements, like crippling limbs, losing blood in the form of health after being hit with bullets, varying from different kinds of weapons and ammo used, and being knocked over when hit with large explosions, stuff like that. But someone who's more the Halo type will find these kinds of mods stupid and would rather have a mod that gave all the women in Fallout D cup breasts. (Don't get your panties in a knot, I'm just poking fun, I play Halo too... sometimes... due to lack of options)
In my opinion, the staff of Bethesda Softworks needs to look into mods like the ones I find adds more immersion and try to incorporate them into future games. It's obvious they're trying very hard to get more elements of gameplay with every new game and I think it's a promising sign they made such a vast improvement since Oblivion, not to mention they do give a sense of willingness to improve themselves. But just don't let the success go to their heads! And above all, for god sake, improve the conversations. I mean, Fallout 3's bots at least look a little into it when they talk to you, but the utter lack of dialogue and personalities makes it less exciting to talk to other residence.
What I loved about adventure games was you could have whole conversations with random people, that had absolutely nothing to do with any quest or plot, they're just there to have fun, weird, unique conversations with. This would add so much more variety to that pesky role playing element the Beth team is suppose to be reinforcing.
So, let me leave you with this final thought, I'd also love to see a multilayer ad-on. I mean, the Fallout 3 sandbox is so huge, it's just begging for co-op! Think of it, just disable VATS (it's a crutch anyway) and modify how you talk to the bots so the game doesn't freeze with creepy, unbudging eye contact (which also need to be improved), you could let dozens of players wander aimlessly on your server! And to keep it balanced, use a level cap, so everyone is default at lv.20 or so when they spawn in, start everyone with a few basic weapons, some stimpacks and everything else like armor, rations, misc, must be scavenged upon spawning, and may be looted off the corpse when dying, only getting the default equipment upon respawn.
Think how cool it'd be to run into a random encounter with an actual player, get into a fight with him/her, then assaulted by a hoard of Super Mutants that you and the guest player must fend off together, just to survive! Then being left with the moral decision later of either killing said guest, or letting him/her live out of gratitude. It's be like a free mmorp-.... oh... wait... that's why they didn't do that already.
On that note, I hope you enjoyed my thoughts... and Planet Fallout sucks.
EDIT: Fixed some grammatical errors. Only found two, not bad for something I wrote at 4am.
hilarious!
