Fallout 3

[The Madman]

@The Madman: This post was not directed at you or your post. I've just been hanging out at the official Bethsoft forums for a while and got quite annoyed by some posts there. I also just cleared out some of my more explicit sayings in this post, I didn't mean to be so offensive.

No problem! Fallout fans tend to lean a weeeeeeeee bit towards the slightly nutter side of fanboyism sometimes, ie No Mutants Allowed.

I'm just cynical about the whole thing... can't help it, I reall can't! I really enjoyed Morrowind, Oblivion not so much, but morrowind was great, yet I still just can't muster any enthusiasm towards Bethesda's Fallout 3. It just doesn't sit right. It's not Bethesda's type of game I say.

Personally I'm of the oppinion Troika should have done Fallout 3. Sure their games were buggy as hell, but anyone who's played Vampire: Bloodlines or Arcanum can tell you they had a knack for great dialogue and dark humour. Plus alot of the Troika guys were the ones who made Fallout! Sadly, Troika is gone and Bethesda's got Fallout now and I'll always be going "Fallout 3 woulda been so much better if Troika had made it" regardless of how good Fallout 3 actually turns out.

I've kinda ruined it for myself really. Pity me!

 

[PurpleRain]

Don't assume that Oblivion is everything about Bethseda, and that any game of theirs will follow its format. I'll admit none of their games have the same degree of choice and endings that Fallout did, but that doesn't mean they can't learn from Fallout and make a try of that themselves. They've already stated that for every quest/problem/etc in the game they're trying to make sure there are at least 2 different solutions. If they manage that then it means you can maybe get through the game without firing a single shot. Hopefully...

I've only played Oblivion. The others sound quite different so I wonder why they changed it to its linear path we see today.

I also remember playing one character in Fallout 1 that went through the whole game without killing one thing. Hard and not really worth it, but at the end of the day I can boast to all my non-existant friends.

 

[stevesan]

people expecting it to be like Fallout 1/2 will be disappointed. i just don't think the market is there for a game like that (cuz you and i don't form a sizable market), and bethesda as a business should recognize this and act accordingly (hey, they have people's wages to pay). otherwise, there's no reason to doubt it'll be a fine game.

 

[PureDolemite]

I remember Master of Orion III coming out, and not liking it because it was a different game than the previous ones. I remember XCom Apocalypse coming out, and not liking it because it was a different game than the previous ones.

I'm also a big fan of the X-COM series, but as different as Apocalypse was, it still was a good game and kept a lot of the original XCOM style, since it let you keep the time based combat. I figure the best way to look at a huge style change for XCOM would have been XCOM Alliance if it had been completed, for those that aren't familiar with it, it was going to be a FPS XCOM game with vision cams a lot like Tom Clancy's Advanced Warfighter. Too bad Microprose went under.

I'm not going to be quick to jump on the bandwagon against Bethesda, probably because I enjoyed Oblivion, as bland as it was. Since the dialogue being all messed with hasn't been confirmed I'll ignore that till it's proven, the first person perspective never bothered me, I think it could bring a new edge to Fallout. I'm trying to image this as the worst case scenario, it becomes The Elder Scrolls V: Fallout IV, so it should be fun with a bland storyline, Oblivion kept me entertained for about 60 hours, so if this can do the same then I'll complain when I realize how many hours of my life I've wasted on it. It better at least look really nice.

 

[Saltiness]

I think perhaps you don't know enough about Bethseda then. Have you played Daggerfall? It allowed 4 very distinctly different endings (and not simple black or white endings either). Morrowind unfortunately didn't include this (though in the game it looks like they considered multiple endings) but it does allow several very different paths to the ending (one of which involves committing a disputably very evil act). On top of that were the various mutually exclusive quests and factions that unveiled different stories and politics etc, most of which were not plain good or evil.

As yet there's no real indication that Fallout 3 will have any gameplay factors from Oblivion.

From what I understand of TES, it's been progressively "stream lined" and as such more of the little things (example: alternative endings in Daggerfall) are kicked to the way side for vaunted radiant AI, a pretty graphics engine and Mr Stewart doing a voice over. Also keep in mind that Daggerfall was over 10 years ago. Companies change, and the development team and it's principles (no matter what PR spin they add) also change. Hell, look at Interplay, between making Fallout and now it's turned from a premier development and publish house into some gimpy prick screwing his employees.

Mini games. Level scaling. And that's from someone who doesn't really care to follow the development that closely.

 

[rawlight]

Sorry Quis, I was just trying to stir up trouble I don't really think you are a fanboi. Although I stand by what I said about tactics being full of fail.

I'm not one of those crazies from NMA but I'm pretty sure that Bethesda will turn Fallout into some crap FPS/rpg (note that FPS is in caps and rpg is not) that is playable on a console. This is what they did to their own series, so why not to Fallout? They also have bullet time or something like it in this game. It's all real-time, but you can use this bullet time to do aimed shots.

I'm going to play it, but I can smell another Bioshock coming...

 

[Ranzel]

I'm going to play it, but I can smell another Bioshock coming...

Uhhhhhhh...........what's wrong with Bioshock again?

Edit*

If this game is Bioshock in a more sandbox format- Best. Game. Ever.

 

[soladrin]

I'm going to play it, but I can smell another Bioshock coming...

Uhhhhhhh...........what's wrong with Bioshock again?

Edit*

If this game is Bioshock in a more sandbox format- Best. Game. Ever.

it was system shock 2, without the part where you die. every time.

I just doubt they can even get the skills to work properly in FPS, i mean, i dont think they will even get weapon skills right :S your aiming the gun at someone, how can it miss if your perfectly aiming it yourself... skills seem kind of illogical here.

 

[St Puglo]

From what I understand of TES, it's been progressively "stream lined" and as such more of the little things (example: alternative endings in Daggerfall) are kicked to the way side for vaunted radiant AI, a pretty graphics engine and Mr Stewart doing a voice over. Also keep in mind that Daggerfall was over 10 years ago... Mini games. Level scaling. And that's from someone who doesn't really care to follow the development that closely.

That's a completely valid point, things do change. I don't always think it's a bad thing (maps with waypoints, level design that doesn't look like a 10 year-old's work, and better inventory management, for example), but I feel that Bethesda took the truffled foie gras of Daggerfall, and made it into a spicy chicken sandwich with Oblivion, all while wrecking the balance of the game. What I always really liked about the Fallout series was that if you were a clever little boy, you could beat both games barely firing your gun at all, Daggerfall less so, but it provided more options than just charge in, guns a-blazing. The side quests in Oblivion (especially the Mages Guild and Dark Brotherhood) retained some of this quality, but without a combat oriented character, the main quest was impossible to finish.

So I guess all of this sums up by saying this: if Bethesda keeps on its quest to streamline its games for console users, I think Fallout 3 will be "teh sux0rz." That's not to say I won't buy it, what substitute do I have? No console game is EVER going to ship with an instruction manual of more than 30 pages (and that's a stretch), so RPG's can't have 14 hojillion skills like in older PC and pen and paper games. While this makes games easier to play, it also makes greatly diminishes the variety of in-game challenges. If the only problem to solve comes in the form of "where can I find a bigger gun?" the game loses my interest. I think this can be solved with better balance and better writing. If the writers create problems with both violent and non-violent solutions, both the old school PC dorks and the console twitch players will be happy, but for this to work, the balance must allow both play styles to flourish.