If I didn't like Fallout, will I like Skyrim?

[captaincabbage]

I'd say about 90% of the issues you have can be back-traced to the Gamebryo Engine. It's a festering pile of camel crap if I ever saw one and a sorry excuse for a game engine. I can only imagine the reason Bethesda used it for so long is because they we either locked into a contract of some sorts, or they were super cheap and couldn't be arsed forking out the extra dough for a newer game engine.

Also, It's been pointed out a zillion times already, but Obsidian made NV, not Bethesda. They've been hard at work with Skyrim since they finished Fallout, and as I recall, it was only about half their team working on Fallout, so if half their team made Fallout 3, then I can't imagine what their whole team, a new game engine, and 2-3 years development time could let them churn out.

 

[ChupathingyX]

Hear, hear. Honestly, anyone who thinks FO 3 was a mistake doesn't hold much validity in argument against me. There was so much done right about that game that if the negative affects your opinion about it THAT much, something's slightly off about your gaming experience.

Ignorance is bliss, eh?

Fallout 3 was a big mistake because it was Bethesda taking a loved series and turning it into whatever the hell they wanted. The original Fallout games were about humanity rebuilding civilisation after they destroyed it because they got greedy and couldn't get along. The Fallout games delved into human nature and how we would react to living in a life where civilisation was gone and now a new one was going to be born out of the ashes of the old world.

Fallout 1 and 2 both included these aspects. In Fallout 1 the Master was aware that people had caused their own downfall and that as humans we could not properly take care of ourselves, therefore he saw Super Mutants, which he could create, as the next step in human evolution. He wanted to create an army of mutants that would unify the human race and make all of their goals the same so we could live together and be more equal. However, there were many flaws such as people who had been living in the wasteland were not fit for transformation and became dumb and brutish, whereas more "cleaner" humans became intelligent and strong beings. More importantly all female Super Mutants are sterile, which means that eventually the Super Mutant race will no longer be able to continue and they will die out.

Basically, Fallout 1 dealt with getting rid of human's problems by getting rid of humans themselves.

Now let's skip to Fallout 3, what was that about? Oh yeah some whiny kid whose Dad goes missing and now he wants to go find him. Then said dad wants to purify the water (which should've mostly cleared by now anyway) to give all the people of the East Coast fresh water, because apparently they don't know how to make wells or filter water like those of the West Coast.

Fallout 3 just didn't have the political or societal messages of the original Fallouts and instead sacrificed that for stupid quests that you only take part in to see what cool loot you will receive. Fallout 3 was filled with stupidity and nonsensical things, such as the Experimental MIRV and Mothership Zeta. Bethesda did away with rebuilding civilisation and decided they would focus more on petty survivors trying hard to create communities where they can survive the harshness of the apocalypse, 200 years after it has happened, made even more pathetic by the existence of the NCR in the West who by that time had made a large republic of more than 300,000 people with a fully working government and military.

Fallout: New Vegas thankfully went back to original messages of Fallout and continued civilisations rebirth with the NCR and Caesar's Legion, a force dedicated to fixing the mistakes of the old world by taking one of the most successful empires in history and getting rid of the negatives of it, mainly the senate and democracy.

Would an empire led by one man's ideals work in the long run? Most likely not.

Would the NCR, who can barely hold onto Hoover Dam and Vegas be able to continue to spread? Not at all if they continue to be lead by inept commanders.

Can Mr House control all of Vegas by himself, or will he eventually turn into the real life Howard Hughes and become obsessed with himself and eventually become cut off from the real? Of course, because it has already happened.

Independent New Vegas? People free to do what they? Yeah, not a chance.

So yes I do think Fallout 3 was a mistake, and I've just given a small taste as to why.

 

[Jezzascmezza]

The tone of both games are/will be completely different, as will the combat and other aspects of gameplay.
So yeah, I'd say give Skyrim a chance, even if you weren't a huge fan of New Vegas.

 

[ComradeJim270]

I respectfully disagree. Obvilion was Bethesda trying something different (I mean, that is what video game development is all about... innovation and fun... but admittedly, some ideas are better or 'more fun' than others) anyway, maybe Bethesda's recent type of gameplay is NOT for you... that's fine, I respect that (not really but lets pretend, lol) I will agree, many flaws in oblivion... I believe bethesda will try to fix them in Skyrim. Though just because oblivion has flaws does not make it a bad game by any means... it's just a good game with flaws.
As for FO:3 being "bland mediocre excuse for a game" well... thousands upon thousands of people have played for hundreds of hours... I think that speaks for itself

Innovation and fun? Nothing good about Oblivion was innovative. Bethesda's vaunted "radiant AI" was a joke, the combat system was bland, the setting was repetitive and dull. There are many more serious problems like these, and I found very few redeeming qualities to weigh against them. I did play the game a great deal, I tried very hard to like it, but the more I played it the more I realized that the only thing impressive about it is that it's big. It sacrifices everything for scale.

As for "having flaws does not make it a bad game", that's kind of what "bad game" means: a game with flaws which are seriously detrimental to its enjoyment.

As for Fallout 3, it doesn't matter if the entire population of the world plays it until the sun dies, popularity is not a measure of quality. Fallout 3 is better than a lot of games, but there are a lot of awful games out there for it to be better than. It's an improvement on Oblivion, but there's nothing about it that really stands out. "Bland and mediocre" is perhaps too harsh, but much of what I hear people say about its quality seems far too generous to me.

You, of course, are welcome to your opinion on the matter so long as you don't expect me to agree with it.

I hope you're right about Skyrim. I would love for it to be good, but I'm not going to count on it. I'd rather be pleasantly surprised by a good game than disappointed by a bad one.

By the way, I posted reviews for both of those games in the user reviews forum and you can go look at them if you want to know why I don't much care for either one.

...

Funny how hating Fallout 3 is blaphemy when Fallout 3 was the game that ruined the Fallout lore and screwed up the overall feel of the game series. If anything is being blasphemous around here...it's Fallout 3 and Bethesda.

If doing what Bethesda did to the FO series was "screwing it up" and "ruining the FO lore" then they can "screw it up" and "ruin the lore" as much as they want... because I view it as vast improvements to the series

Based on your words I don't believe you've played the first two games.

If doing what Bethesda did to the FO series was "screwing it up" and "ruining the FO lore" then they can "screw it up" and "ruin the lore" as much as they want... because I view it as vast improvements to the series

Hear, hear. Honestly, anyone who thinks FO 3 was a mistake doesn't hold much validity in argument against me. There was so much done right about that game that if the negative affects your opinion about it THAT much, something's slightly off about your gaming experience.

God forbid someone should dislike a game that you don't, or have different measures of quality.

 

[NellNell]

I think your problem was thinking NV was a good Fallout game to base Skyrim on. Now I'm not saying it was bad, but go give Fallout 3 a try. Much better than NV. I played that game for a good year and a half, after DLC of course.

EDIT: But then again they are two different games entirely.

 

[Tdc2182]

It honestly depends.

I didn't like Fallout 3, but I loved Oblivion (Not that I didn't like Fallout 3, it just wasn't really my type of game).

Do you like Fantasy at all?

 

[Liudeius]

First off, Fallout New Vegas was not a Bethesda game. It was made by Obsidian.

Since it's still months from being released, none of us can say for sure how similar Skyrim will be to Fallout 3, the last big Bethesda RPG.
But Fallout 3, compared to the last Elder Scrolls game, Oblivion, had quite a few similarities. So I would expect Skyrim to have its similarities to Fallout, but the engine has been changed for Skyrim (it didn't between Oblivion and Fallout) so a number of issues relating to it (bugs, physics, and animations) will likely be resolved.

And the bugs, oh jesus.

As such a huge game, and a Bethesda game, Skyrim will be riddled with bugs, this is for sure. The question is whether or not Bethesda will put in the time to release official patches for them.

The biggest game breaker for me was all the stuff in my inventory..

You inventory will most likely be similar to Fallout. They claim to have streamlined it so you can more easily access the items you want, but I'm sure the weight limit will remain. Since they are returning to a fantasy setting, we can hope for weight limit increasing spells (in Oblivion you could increase your limit to 1000 without much difficulty), but I would just recommend that if you do choose to play it, don't feel like you need to loot everything. Many of the objects in Bethesda games are purely cosmetic, to improve immersion and give hardcore roleplayers something to RP with.

I don't know if Skyrim follows the same kind of mechanic, but I also didn't like the story,

We can only hope some of the new employees hired by Bethesda are some good writers, they aren't known for their good plots.
Freedom of choice will be returning, there is no question about that. If you don't like plot and reading, I question your choice to play RPG's, that's kind of the point, but it has been confirmed that Skyrim will have an even more advanced choice system. According to Bethesda, every action you make will be able to have consequences in later quests, quests will even be given based on your actions in the game world.
Hopefully we will see better dialogue, I think they hired more voice actors this time, but being an RPG, I don't know how big a role cutscenes will play in the story telling. There was definitely an increase in number of cutscenes from Oblivion to Fallout 3, but as I said, they have mentioned a far more complex choice system.
The dialogue trees should hopefully be more immersive though. The characters no longer have the somewhat creepy face to face view, they will continue going about their lives as you talk.

some of the graphics were kind of subpar compared to other games I've played.

If you want to check out the graphics, there are a number of game trailers. While they don't look bad in my opinion, they aren't top notch either. If your complaint was with humanoid animations, the new engine will make characters look far more realistic with far better animations.

Am I just not an RPG kind of guy, or do I just really not like Fallout?

If you really have a problem with plot, freedom of choice, and tons of items to manage, you might just want to stay away from RPG's, at least the more hardcore ones.

A number of your complaints could be resolved by playing the PC game. The PC game will have graphics superior to the versions shown in trailers (the trailers are on the 360), and, for Oblivion, a player released patch fixed many of the bugs left behind by Bethesda, so we can expect something similar if Skyrim is equally buggy.
I'm probably going to be playing it on a PS3 too though, so I hope Bethesda sticks around to fix the bugs.

How are iron sights a problem if you can turn them off? Some people like them, some people don't, complaing about that is stupid.

There was no reason to add them to the game in the first place. If you're using guns, you're going to be using V.A.T.S. until you run out of AP, and when you run out of AP zooming in helps. Of course, I just plain don't like iron sights much, so that's mainly a personal issue.

I don't know what your actual discussion is about, but some people like to play Fallout as an FPS. Personally I have stopped using VATS for most enemies when I play Fallout.

Is Skyrim keeping the obnoxious leveling system?

Maybe someone has already answered you, but just in case.
Monster leveling will be similar. You will find more high level monsters as you become a higher level, but once you enter a dungeon, the monster's levels are locked, they will never become stronger. Hopefully they will fix the issue with Daedric armor becoming as worthless as fur once you hit 25-30, I think I heard mention of limits on equipment to prevent any more Daedric wielding bandits.

If you are referring to player leveling, fear not. The system has been changed. You will still level based on skills, but you won't be picking your class and other important stuff before even getting into the game. All of your skills will influence your total level, so you can level up whatever you want.
I haven't heard anything guaranteeing we won't have to suffer the annoyance of strict training to make sure all attributes get a +5 boost rather than +1, but I think they've learned from that mistake.
There will be perks too which you can choose as you level, similar to Fallout 3, but more skill specific and numerous.

 

[ComradeJim270]

Freedom of choice will be returning, there is no question about that. If you don't like plot and reading, I question your choice to play RPG's, that's kind of the point, but it has been confirmed that Skyrim will have an even more advanced choice system. According to Bethesda, every action you make will be able to have consequences in later quests, quests will even be given based on your actions in the game world.
Hopefully we will see better dialogue, I think they hired more voice actors this time, but being an RPG, I don't know how big a role cutscenes will play in the story telling. There was definitely an increase in number of cutscenes from Oblivion to Fallout 3, but as I said, they have mentioned a far more complex choice system.

I will be very surprised if this turns out to be true. Bethesda's hype machine makes lots of promises like this but rarely delivers, and I don't think they'd know "choice" or "consequences" if you tore the definitions out of the dictionary and stapled them to the back of all their employees' hands. Then again, they seemed to have a better idea of how to offer something resembling that in Fallout 3 than in Oblivion or even Morrowind, so maybe they've figured it out by now.

 

[94samWOW]

Ignorance is bliss, eh? . . . .

You know, I think you play video games for the wrong reason. Maybe next time, you should play video games to enjoy a good game, and not look for "the hidden political agenda." Regardless of the meaning of ANY of the Fallout games, they were good games, and Fallout 3 fixed more than enough of the GAMEPLAY issues that the former two threw in your face.
To be REALLY honest, I don't care what you think about the "message" in any of the games. The OP's problem with FO: NV was, from what I can gather, an issue about gameplay, which makes your reason for your hatred of 3 completely irrelevant. Nothing about your posts thus far have many the least bit of headway in explaining whether or not someone who didn't like NV would like Skyrim.

 

[trooper6]

I love RPGs and play all sorts of different styles of RPGs.

Now, I don't know if you'd like Skyrim after reading your tastes. Bethesda tends to do sandbox RPGs...and that doesn't seem like your thing.

Many are recommending you go with jRPGs instead.

I'll recommend you try some of the Bioware RPGs, they are more linear, have a couple of cut scenes here and there (not nearly as many as in jRPGs though).

So try Mass Effect 1 & 2 for the sci-fi RPG
Dragon Age: Origens, Dragon Age 2 for the Fantasy RPG

You still have to deal with inventory...since a lot of wRPG folks like to deal with inventory and seem to think of inventory/resource management as fundamental to the genre, but the second installment of both of those series slims down inventory management somewhat.

 

[ChupathingyX]

You know, I think you play video games for the wrong reason. Maybe next time, you should play video games to enjoy a good game, and not look for "the hidden political agenda." Regardless of the meaning of ANY of the Fallout games, they were good games, and Fallout 3 fixed more than enough of the GAMEPLAY issues that the former two threw in your face.
To be REALLY honest, I don't care what you think about the "message" in any of the games. The OP's problem with FO: NV was, from what I can gather, an issue about gameplay, which makes your reason for your hatred of 3 completely irrelevant. Nothing about your posts thus far have many the least bit of headway in explaining whether or not someone who didn't like NV would like Skyrim.

No I play different video games for different reasons.

Some video games I play just to have mindless fun, some I play for great multiplayer experiences with friends, some I play for strategy and planning and the feeling of successfully pulling off a tactic, some I play for a deep storyline and characters, and some I play because they offer an insight to a subject that is usually ignored in most video games.

I play Fallout: New Vegs for its political and societal message, expansive storyline, hidden messages, deep characters and retro-futuristic image of American culture. That's what Fallout 1 and 2 were about, that's what Fallout: New Vegas was about, so yes, I was playing them right.

Fallout 3 on the other hand was not like F1/2 or NV and didn't play like them, it was different and didn't hold a lightto the Fallout universe. You can't just take a series and turn it into whatever the hell you like because you didn't understand it, or else what happened to Crash Bandicoot and Spyro happens all over again. Fallout 3 is part of the Fallout franchise so I expect it to have the same kind of meaning as the previous ones, but it didn't, it was just about doing quests for loot and full of stupid jokes for cheap laughs and one of the worst endings in a video game I've ever seen. Even putting aside stuff like storyline and lore, the game was still just bad.

 

[trooper6]

Ignorance is bliss, eh? . . . .

You know, I think you play video games for the wrong reason. Maybe next time, you should play video games to enjoy a good game, and not look for "the hidden political agenda."

For some people, contemplating political and social messages is part of what it means to enjoy a good game.

Fun and thought are not mutually exclusive for everyone. And for some people, mindless fun is an oxymoron.

In other words, different people enjoy different things.

 

[Shirastro]

Well i like Morrowind and Oblivion(slightly less though) and yet im not a big fan of Fallout.
I don't hate it, but the whole post-apocalyptic scenario just isn't for me.
I can see that it's a good game, but just can not force my self to finish it.


In other words, just because you dint like one of the Bethesda works doesn't mean you wont like the others.

 

[Laser Priest]

Skyrim's not out yet. I have no bloody idea.

They said they've improved the inventory system if that was your biggest issue.

They have a whole new engine and I say that the game looks beautiful. I can't be too sure about bugs at the moment, but perhaps the new engine will fix that.

 

[Upbeat Zombie]

Well the parts you don't like. Like choosing your path, or having a large inventory and a lot of items will probably be in skyrim. Also i'm not gonna kid myself skyrim will have many bugs. So yeah if those are the game breakers for you then you will probably not like the Elder Scrolls games.

 

[WizardArtist]

Probably not, while it is a fantasy game,Bethesda products usually follow the same formula(I played both fallout and oblivion),
story mostly told by listening to people
goofing off in an massive open world
and yes the obscene amount of items can get ridiculous
But don't let Bethesda turn you off to RPGs they usually are the only ones that make their games this way, I think.

By the way I have have just created an account for the Escapist. I visited the site a lot and told myself "why not?".
So greeting to all of you.

 

[Mr Fatherland]

The Skyrim graphics are going to blow the previous Bethesda games out the water in that compartment. I also have the feeling it's gonna be less buggy. I think you should try Borderlands, the only inventory items in that are better guns and shields, with none of that, "Empty tin can" crap. It's hella fun with friends too.