To everyone who's played Fallout 3...
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I'll admit that I didn't focus on comparisson in the review so I'll do that now...Log Dropper M.D. said:
Old Fallout Combat, in my opinion, was slow, lacked complexity and was redeamed purely by the fact that I could shoot someone in the balls. It was based solely around the idea of choosing what weapon to use and what body part to shoot, no special abilities no nothing. I always played as a straight gunslinger though so this may be slanted but anyways.
Recall any of you the battle in the Boneyard from Fallout 1, a torturous sequence when your character gets to act roughly once every 5 minutes due to the shear scale of the battle. The fact that you only get to control one character in even the largest battles made things very tedious.
Now I will concede strategy, but I never found Fallout 1+2 as tactical as say... Baldurs Gate or the myriad of other tactical games. Primarily it's the fact that you can only control yourself that IMO removes most of the strategy from the play, it's basically just position, shoot, heal when needed. I'd rather do that in real time.
Also I am no longer 13, like I was when I played the first game, hence shooting someone in the balls no longer holds the appeal it once did. So I'll settle for the well depicted exploding skulls of Fallout 3.
As well I find that VATS makes it feel more like an RPG than Oblivion, as VATS is effectively "Real Time Turn Based" with the Action Point Gauge, and is the most efficient way of fighting if you don't want to waste ammo. I have my gripes with it but it's action packed, tense and looks really cool, so I prefer it over the original Fallout battles, which were more of a means to an end than anything, that end being violence and the rest of the game.
I feel like the odd man out here, having never played Oblivion. However, I am enjoying this game, and that's even though I played Fallout 1 for the first time in years just last week. I haven't gotten far yet, but I'm eagerly awaiting seeing what's next.
Richard Groovy Pants said:
Let's just avoid all the hate! We're discussing Fallout 3! Which may, or may not, be a freaking sweet game.Log Dropper M.D. said:
In the last year alone, over 20,000 threads were locked (Give or take 20,000). You alone can prevent this genocide of threads for just a mere 100% less insult thread battles a day. You contribution to this noble cause will allow little threads a small hope of become real, actual discussions.
Won't you consider helping?
*Pan camera to a small, malnourished thread with a fly on it's face*
Thread Savers International: Just don't be a dick.
/gimick
I have to say that I bought this game today and am now just counting the time until I can leave work to go home and install on my PC and play it 
I can't wait to get into the game and start exploring...
As to the arguments above, try reading other posts/reviews and maybe flame-bait questions wouldn't be asked... A peaceful forum is a healthy forum after all :-D
I can't wait to get into the game and start exploring...As to the arguments above, try reading other posts/reviews and maybe flame-bait questions wouldn't be asked... A peaceful forum is a healthy forum after all :-D
Well, I never played the original Fallout games, so I can't make that comparison, but I did play Oblivion. I didn't like Oblivion, the beginning 'hook' was so weak IMO that I just wanted to stop playing the entire first dungeon and even once I was out, so I did. (Not to start an Oblivion argument, it's just important to know where I'm coming from.)
This is like Oblivion in the sense that it's a big world, there are quests you do to level up, and the voice acting isn't Oscar worthy. So, much like a large number of RPGs out there. On the other hand, it's much more compelling, and exciting, the intro is great, and the setting is spot on. I love this game, and whether or not it's exactly like the original is a moot point. It's a great game full of fun quests and good combat (read: passible, don't expect FPS level gunfights, though VATS is sweeeet).
Highly recommended!
This is like Oblivion in the sense that it's a big world, there are quests you do to level up, and the voice acting isn't Oscar worthy. So, much like a large number of RPGs out there. On the other hand, it's much more compelling, and exciting, the intro is great, and the setting is spot on. I love this game, and whether or not it's exactly like the original is a moot point. It's a great game full of fun quests and good combat (read: passible, don't expect FPS level gunfights, though VATS is sweeeet).
Highly recommended!
As an addendum to other things I've said I'd like to point out Penny Arcade's Wednesday News Post as a fairly definitive statement on Fallout 3's relation to the rest of the series.
Summed up well as follows (and I quote)
"He wanted to know if it was like the other Fallouts. "No," I said. "But it's very, very good."
Summed up well as follows (and I quote)
"He wanted to know if it was like the other Fallouts. "No," I said. "But it's very, very good."
I was one of the 23 people who actually bought and played the 14 Degrees East Brotherhood of Steel game on PC. New-fangled VATS seems like an extension of that RTS combat model. In BoS, you play in real-time, but when you give an order like "shoot that molerat," the character's AP meter drops and then regenerates, again, all in real-time. A guy with high AP can take many shots close together. Bethsoft's VATS is more closely modelled on this use of AP than on the turn-based approach of the earlier games.
EDIT: I guess what I'm saying is that the new VATS grew out something and didn't just appear without precedent. BoS was the middle of a transition between turn-based and VATS bullet time.
EDIT: I guess what I'm saying is that the new VATS grew out something and didn't just appear without precedent. BoS was the middle of a transition between turn-based and VATS bullet time.
Fallout 3 uses many aspects of the Oblivion system, but to call it "Oblivion with guns" is overly simplistic, because guns are only a small part of the changes to the combat system, which is itself only one of several changes.
The leveling system is almost directly copied from previous Fallout games, which works perfectly. In comparison to Oblivion, this means that you worry about experience rather than using your skills frequently. One thing that they did really well was to make sure than a significant portion of your experience comes from non-combat things. 18xp is the most I've gotten so far from a kill (most things have been 3-6), while hacking an average computer terminal yields 56xp. You also gain XP from finding new locations.
There is no magic - that might seem intuitive, but it also an important difference between Fallout and Oblivion.
NPC dialogue is vastly improved from Oblivion, although it doesn't seem quite up to par with previous Fallout games. There are a lot more generic NPC's with no dialogue, but their existence does not detract (in comparison to previous Fallout games) from the frequency of unique NPC's, instead they make the world seem much more realistically sized. In about ten hours of play so far, I've only once encountered a time when I wanted a dialogue option that wasn't available.
The house-owning mechanic has come over from Oblivion, with a few tweaks, and I find it a welcome addition to Fallout, primarily as a source of storage space.
Combat is the biggest change, because it's not like Oblivion or previous Fallouts. It's real-time, like Oblivion, but takes place at much greater range. The environment also matters a whole lot more, providing cover and occasionally exploding (as I discovered the hard way when I tried taking cover in the middle of a road full of cars. It was the first time I had seen my character lose all four limbs in a death sequence). Grenades and mines change the dynamics almost as much as guns, especially since they do a realistic amount of damage in comparison to guns (i.e. A LOT). V.A.T.S. is incredibly useful for someone like me who is bad at FPS, and compensates for that lack of ability nicely. The fact that it's limited by action points means that people who are good at FPS will still benefit from their skills. It lets you shoot grenades out of the air. Other people can probably tell you a lot more more about the combat system though - I'm playing a scrawny scientist, so most of my combat experience is being shot at rather than shooting back.
My sense of it is that it takes the best elements of both Oblivion and the Fallout series and combines them. It will feel like Oblivion if you've played that before, because the interface is similar. If you've played a Fallout game before, this will also feel similar because the look and feel of the world and NPCs are the same. I've played both, and to me it honestly feels more like Fallout with the Oblivion interface rather than Oblivion with guns.
The leveling system is almost directly copied from previous Fallout games, which works perfectly. In comparison to Oblivion, this means that you worry about experience rather than using your skills frequently. One thing that they did really well was to make sure than a significant portion of your experience comes from non-combat things. 18xp is the most I've gotten so far from a kill (most things have been 3-6), while hacking an average computer terminal yields 56xp. You also gain XP from finding new locations.
There is no magic - that might seem intuitive, but it also an important difference between Fallout and Oblivion.
NPC dialogue is vastly improved from Oblivion, although it doesn't seem quite up to par with previous Fallout games. There are a lot more generic NPC's with no dialogue, but their existence does not detract (in comparison to previous Fallout games) from the frequency of unique NPC's, instead they make the world seem much more realistically sized. In about ten hours of play so far, I've only once encountered a time when I wanted a dialogue option that wasn't available.
The house-owning mechanic has come over from Oblivion, with a few tweaks, and I find it a welcome addition to Fallout, primarily as a source of storage space.
Combat is the biggest change, because it's not like Oblivion or previous Fallouts. It's real-time, like Oblivion, but takes place at much greater range. The environment also matters a whole lot more, providing cover and occasionally exploding (as I discovered the hard way when I tried taking cover in the middle of a road full of cars. It was the first time I had seen my character lose all four limbs in a death sequence). Grenades and mines change the dynamics almost as much as guns, especially since they do a realistic amount of damage in comparison to guns (i.e. A LOT). V.A.T.S. is incredibly useful for someone like me who is bad at FPS, and compensates for that lack of ability nicely. The fact that it's limited by action points means that people who are good at FPS will still benefit from their skills. It lets you shoot grenades out of the air. Other people can probably tell you a lot more more about the combat system though - I'm playing a scrawny scientist, so most of my combat experience is being shot at rather than shooting back.
My sense of it is that it takes the best elements of both Oblivion and the Fallout series and combines them. It will feel like Oblivion if you've played that before, because the interface is similar. If you've played a Fallout game before, this will also feel similar because the look and feel of the world and NPCs are the same. I've played both, and to me it honestly feels more like Fallout with the Oblivion interface rather than Oblivion with guns.
It has the shell of oblivion but with dialogue trees, different level up system, combat system, story, setting, tone, weapons such as: nukes rifles nail in board, chainsaw, laser rifles; it has a fallout-esque ending as opposed to having an endless Oblivion, monsters, and characters.
If one would have to generalize: Fallout 3 is a new Fallout game which was developed by Bethesda Softworks, the same group that created the elder scrolls series, and also uses the same rendering engine as oblivion with some upgrades to it.
On another note, has anyone ever seen the "A Christmas Carol" version with Patrick Stewart in it? It was pretty good.
If one would have to generalize: Fallout 3 is a new Fallout game which was developed by Bethesda Softworks, the same group that created the elder scrolls series, and also uses the same rendering engine as oblivion with some upgrades to it.
I would've preferred Neil Patrick Harris.Onyx Oblivion said:
On another note, has anyone ever seen the "A Christmas Carol" version with Patrick Stewart in it? It was pretty good.
Even if it isnt as good as "the good old days" (just 11 years ago, though), it is at least more in the spirit of Fallout than Fallout Tactics and Fallout BoS, that at least i think most of us can agree on. And that it is better that Oblivion on many points...
PS: I am not saying that Fallout Tactics was a bad game. It was Great! But with very little roleplaying opportunities. But the best tactical combat gameplay out there.
PS: PS: Ive would rather have had Fallout 3 - Van Buren than Fallout 3 - Oblivion, though... Seriously, the Van Buren engine looked SWEET! Google it on youtube if you havent seen the engine before...
PS: I am not saying that Fallout Tactics was a bad game. It was Great! But with very little roleplaying opportunities. But the best tactical combat gameplay out there.
PS: PS: Ive would rather have had Fallout 3 - Van Buren than Fallout 3 - Oblivion, though... Seriously, the Van Buren engine looked SWEET! Google it on youtube if you havent seen the engine before...