Fallout 3 discussion

Ugh. I'm still firmly middle-ground-ish here on the perspective.

First, I do NOT want another Oblivion FPS or Third Person Shooter fest. I do NOT want Oblivion with guns. Oblivion was/is a great fantasy FPS but it failed miserably in the RPG department, and Fallout is all about RPG.

Second, I do NOT want a purely fixed perspective isometric-only game. The NMA people who keep harping on this ("IF ITS NOT 2D PIXELATED ISOMETRIX ITS NOT FALLOUT GRALHALH!!!", those types) really are the wierdos, in my view.

My personal perference is still something roughly like the Ground Zero mod/tech demo for Doom 3: http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...57484400160571 . It's designed mainly around a free moving non-fixed external camera, yet in a pinch it can work in the 1st or 3rd person perspective. The combat was very, very rough, but something along those lines would be OK in my book. It worked best in the free-floating camera mode, but those few instances where the char was in the building shooting outward, it made sense to switch to the 1st/3rd person fixed views. Really this would be a win-win in my view. If one wanted to play through in an entirely 1st person, they could, but they'd (hopefully) miss some things that would only be seen with use of an external isometric-ish freefloating camera. Conversely, it'd be cool to maybe hide some things in some hard to see spots that can only be seen when it 1st person perspective. This way, it forces the player to periodically rotate and use different angles to fully explore.

I guess the key thing for me is the combat, I want this to be an RPG, something worthy of the glory days of yore. There should be absolutely nothing in combat that's twitch based, a la Oblivion. Fallout is about RPG. Fallout is about SPECIAL. Fallout is about nerdness and stats and figuring out how many points I need to dump into energy weapons so I can still get a decent hit percentile at night yet not 'waste' any more so I can put that in another critical skill.

:balloon2:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Add following heretics to hit list:

spino
Lemur
TB666

Keep an eye on the following for potential thoughtcrimes:

econ

Played Silent Storm? That's the perspective I want.

As for the trailer...very nice. But does nothing to put my mind at ease, since the cinematic sweeping drama portions of fallout are not what I doubt Beth's ability to do.

Tycho from Penny Arcade put in his 2 cents on the matter as well:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/06/06

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I have seen opinions running the rage on the Fallout 3 Teaser, but I brave those forums daily - I'm well over the DRI for franchise-related anguish. The clip is not designed to shock or startle people, it has only one purpose - to deliver a high-pressure jet of fan service. Of course, many of the hardcore fans are actually irritated by such brazen attempts to placate them. And thus we see the heavy stone, and also the steep hill, and look! There's Sisyphus, waving madly. Is he greeting us, or warning us?

I consider myself a fan of Fallout, at any rate I did before, and I was grieved to see it ransacked at the hands of an increasingly desperate Interplay. But it's become clear that what makes it Fallout to me is very different than it is for other fans. We ran into the same issue with Tribal War over Tribes 2, culminating in a brutal conflict that pitted gamer against gamer. As it relates to Fallout, I am distinguished from what you might call the Orthodox fan of the series. One is that I simply believe that elements like Turn-Based and Isometric were artifacts of their time. There is nothing wrong with them mechanically, they do not want for elegance, and the genre is still going strong in Japanese titles that I play and enjoy. But I'm not going to create a religion out of it because tiled environments happened to be expedient a million ******* years ago.

Fallout is not - for me - defined by its perspective. It's defined by the unique setting, and the meaningful, satisfying choices I can make to affect that setting. I don't care where the camera is. If those things are intact, they can put the camera in geosynchronous Goddamn orbit.

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Originally Posted by Whacker

Ugh. I'm still firmly middle-ground-ish here on the perspective.

First, I do NOT want another Oblivion FPS or Third Person Shooter fest. I do NOT want Oblivion with guns. Oblivion was/is a great fantasy FPS but it failed miserably in the RPG department, and Fallout is all about RPG.

Second, I do NOT want a purely fixed perspective isometric-only game. The NMA people who keep harping on this ("IF ITS NOT 2D PIXELATED ISOMETRIX ITS NOT FALLOUT GRALHALH!!!", those types) really are the wierdos, in my view.

My personal perference is still something roughly like the Ground Zero mod/tech demo for Doom 3: http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...57484400160571 . It's designed mainly around a free moving non-fixed external camera, yet in a pinch it can work in the 1st or 3rd person perspective. The combat was very, very rough, but something along those lines would be OK in my book. It worked best in the free-floating camera mode, but those few instances where the char was in the building shooting outward, it made sense to switch to the 1st/3rd person fixed views. Really this would be a win-win in my view. If one wanted to play through in an entirely 1st person, they could, but they'd (hopefully) miss some things that would only be seen with use of an external isometric-ish freefloating camera. Conversely, it'd be cool to maybe hide some things in some hard to see spots that can only be seen when it 1st person perspective. This way, it forces the player to periodically rotate and use different angles to fully explore.

I guess the key thing for me is the combat, I want this to be an RPG, something worthy of the glory days of yore. There should be absolutely nothing in combat that's twitch based, a la Oblivion. Fallout is about RPG. Fallout is about SPECIAL. Fallout is about nerdness and stats and figuring out how many points I need to dump into energy weapons so I can still get a decent hit percentile at night yet not 'waste' any more so I can put that in another critical skill.

:balloon2:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Add following heretics to hit list:

spino
Lemur
TB666

Keep an eye on the following for potential thoughtcrimes:

econ

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Wait a sec Whacker, first you want to whack me and now you... agree with me... sort of? :sweatdrop: :inquisitive:

We seem to be in agreement on basic principles. As much as I would also love to see a Fallout based shooter I do not want to FO3 to be one... nor do I want it to play like Oblivion. I want the eye candy of Oblivionesque graphics mixed with a truly modern round based combat engine.

Thanks for the mod linkage for Ground Zero. Very cool, I hope it gets released before I'm qualified to collect Social Security... :clown:

Just got into Fallout 1. It's truly amazing.

Found the water chip, my eighth level character's going great. I've murdered the entire population of the Necropolis (including the glowing ghouls). They just creep me out. I was also forced to defend myself from the 'law' in Junktown after I nailed the doctor for cutting up human bodies... Well, I didn't really have to shoot the guard at the gate in the eyes at point blank range after he just told me to get out, but it left me feeling far more complete about the whole experience.

Anyway, the story's going well, the world's immersive, the violence is actually pretty shocking (not storybook clean killing, so I like it). The ambiguity and options are great. Team members are annoying and get in the way of burst, but you can 'accidentally' head shot them with a Desert Eagle if they do.

Currently I'm just cruising and exploring for a while.

I cannot recommend this game highly enough. The dirt-cheap amazon package is well worth getting.

This goes under the highly official and prestigious 'Orb's 6 Greatest Games' awards as third.

1 - Baldur's Gate II
2 - Europa Barbarorum
3 - Fallout
4 - KOTOR II
5 - Prince of Persia - Two Thrones/Sands of Time
6 - Shadow of the Colossus

I just may have caused the entire population of Adytown, to kill each other. I didn't actually mean to... I just wanted to take out the guards. Anyway, this game has made me empathise, and feel guilty about the twenty-odd innocent townies who got nailed by the guards because I started a firefight with the latter.

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Originally Posted by Orb

This goes under the highly official and prestigious 'Orb's 6 Greatest Games' awards as third.

1 - Baldur's Gate II
2 - Europa Barbarorum
3 - Fallout
4 - KOTOR II.

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A man of impeccable taste, sir. :bow: (I confess I have not played 5 & 6 on your list.)

Personally I always prefered the original Prince of Persia (DOS version) :2thumbsup:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:P...puter_game.png

I wonder how long before we can expect any more info or news sneaking out about FO3. Probably best to put those thoughts into hybernation for a while...

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Originally Posted by Bob the Insane

I wonder how long before we can expect any more info or news sneaking out about FO3. Probably best to put those thoughts into hybernation for a while...

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Game Informer has got an article/preview/super-hype-promo-thing about FO3 in their next issue (July?). My friends at Bethesda indicated that there wouldn't be any other info out until then. They did suggest that the Game Informer article would answer the isometric/third person/first person/brahmin lower colon view question, so I have hope. Then again, their statements made me think the same thing about the teaser clip, so who knows. (They're really careful about the NDA and I try to avoid asking them questions about the game. Needling guys about game details they aren't allowed to talk about is not really something friends do.)

http://fallout3.wordpress.com/

*sigh*

:shame:

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Originally Posted by Whacker

http://fallout3.wordpress.com/

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If it's true then I'm really interested :2thumbsup:

Indeed, IF that is true, then it's Oblivion with Guns pretty much. Oh well, it still never hurt to dream. I shall light a memorial candle tonight in memory of it's passing.

Well almost like Oblivion except with a different leveling and combat system.
Just thinking about how the world will look with a updated oblivion engine makes my mouth drool.

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Originally Posted by Whacker

Indeed, IF that is true, then it's Oblivion with Guns pretty much.

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Er... third person, turn-based combat using the SPECIAL system, without leveled creatures is Oblivion with Guns? Why? Because it runs on a modified Oblivion engine?

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Originally Posted by TinCow

Er... third person, turn-based combat using the SPECIAL system, without leveled creatures is Oblivion with Guns? Why? Because it runs on a modified Oblivion engine?

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Third person aye, but what kind? Floating camera or fixed perspective behind? I'm thinking the latter taking the whole post in context. Further, I read the statements about VATS to mean that combat was designed primarily for first person.

Action points... I don't really see how this works well with first person as they described it. My pessimism read that to be something like "action points are going to be some esoteric meaningless value and combat is for all intents and purposes essentially going to be twitch based". Whatever, I said I would be cool with something turn based roughly like what was in that D3 tech demo, this doesn't sound like that at all. This sounds like counterstrike with a stopwatch each "round".

SPECIAL? They went Beth-style on it and chopped it down to 14 skills. Honestly I don't see how they did that, I thought there were too few skills TBQH. /shrug Guess it's that whole "simplification" thing which I abhor. Witness the removal of quite a few types of weapons from Morrowind to Oblivion, and the overall slimming down of skills.

Level scaling gone is good.

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Originally Posted by Whacker

Third person aye, but what kind? Floating camera or fixed perspective behind? I'm thinking the latter taking the whole post in context. Further, I read the statements about VATS to mean that combat was designed primarily for first person.

Action points... I don't really see how this works well with first person as they described it. My pessimism read that to be something like "action points are going to be some esoteric meaningless value and combat is for all intents and purposes essentially going to be twitch based". Whatever, I said I would be cool with something turn based roughly like what was in that D3 tech demo, this doesn't sound like that at all. This sounds like counterstrike with a stopwatch each "round".

SPECIAL? They went Beth-style on it and chopped it down to 14 skills. Honestly I don't see how they did that, I thought there were too few skills TBQH. /shrug Guess it's that whole "simplification" thing which I abhor. Witness the removal of quite a few types of weapons from Morrowind to Oblivion, and the overall slimming down of skills.

Level scaling gone is good.

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It's the Oblivion engine, so I'm almost positive it's a fixed rear camera, which I agree is not great.

Regarding combat, I'm just going by what I read, which includes this:

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It seems that outside of the VATS system everything is real time. The only time the game pauses is when you enter the VATS system and start using AP and issuing commands. The article doesn’t really say much more than that, but they do say that the game is geared more towards a role-playing turn based style as opposed to a twitch gaming style of play.

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As for the skills... well, I gotta be honest, it entirely depends on the skills that were removed. There were so many totally useless skills and perks in the Fallout games. I personally NEVER used more than 14 skills. Not even close to that number. Sorry, but Gambling simply doesn't do it for me. First Aid AND Doctor? Why both? Totally redundant, the only reason to use First Aid was when you ran out of daily uses of Doctor and wanted extra healing. Even then, easier to simply use Stimpaks. Outdoorsman? I wouldn't expect that to work well in a game without the world map anyway. If you want to avoid a random encounter... walk around it. Throwing? Who ever specialized in Thrown Weapons?

Subtract Gambling, First Aid, Outdoorsman, and Throwing. There ya go, 14 skills left. Not so painful, was it?

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Originally Posted by Whacker

http://fallout3.wordpress.com/

*sigh*

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I don't want to parade in your rain, Whacker, but there is a lot of hope for me in that link. The SPECIAL system is largely in tact and the combat has some action point element and is not purely twitch based - FO3 is looking up. :2thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by econ21

I don't want to parade in your rain, Whacker, but there is a lot of hope for me in that link. The SPECIAL system is largely in tact and the combat has some action point element and is not purely twitch based - FO3 is looking up. :2thumbsup:

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More power to you then sir. There shouldn't be absolutely anything twitch based in the game, hence my disappointment. This really isn't surprising, given one of the Beth dev's posts in the forum a week or so ago. In it, he all but stated that he thinks turn-based is old and busted, and real-time is the new hotness.

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Originally Posted by TinCow

As for the skills... well, I gotta be honest, it entirely depends on the skills that were removed. There were so many totally useless skills and perks in the Fallout games. I personally NEVER used more than 14 skills. Not even close to that number. Sorry, but Gambling simply doesn't do it for me. First Aid AND Doctor? Why both? Totally redundant, the only reason to use First Aid was when you ran out of daily uses of Doctor and wanted extra healing. Even then, easier to simply use Stimpaks. Outdoorsman? I wouldn't expect that to work well in a game without the world map anyway. If you want to avoid a random encounter... walk around it. Throwing? Who ever specialized in Thrown Weapons?

Subtract Gambling, First Aid, Outdoorsman, and Throwing. There ya go, 14 skills left. Not so painful, was it?

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That's entirely your opinion mate.

- I used gambling excessively in FO2. Contrary to what ya'll may think, it does have quite a bit of use, and there were more than a few skill checks on events that looked for high gamble. Further, I don't like wasting time running around looking for random encounters to kill stuff to loot $500 worth of gear that isn't going to make a dent in getting more fusion cell ammo that I need which is $1000+ a whack. This is esp. true when running against the clock attempting to complete tasks/the game within a timeframe as a challenge.

- First Aid was a bit frivolous, but not for people short on stimpacks playing for time. Doctor did heal a bit more but took an hour or two off your timer, as opposed to the 15 in FA.

- Outdoorsman. Again playing for time. And the thought of FO3 being like Oblivion in terms of the world makes me a sad panda. And being able to get around the map without being stopped every 1 cm was far less frustrating.

- Sticking a few points in throwing weapons was incredibly useful for lobing grenades around when playing a shooter char. That saved my hide more than a few times when up against a number of super 'mutes or floaters that bunch up. Also there are people who do like to specialize in throwing and/or melee based characters. Just because you may have not, doesn't mean that others haven't or don't want to. This is the exact same as the lack of weapon diversity in Morrowind vs Oblivion.

http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/vie...er=asc&start=0
^Some screens of gameplay.
I must say that it looks amazing.
Fall 2008 is so far away.

Nooooo! It has weapon degredation! That's one of my most hated 'features' in an RPG! Gah! Where's the point in hunting down a great weapon only to have it break or to be afraid of using it because it might!? It's just as bad if the weapons are easy to repair repeatedly; at that point it becomes a tedious and pointless chore.

There'd better be a toggle or some way to mod it out.

Well, I finished the first one recently (completely stunning :bow:) and am starting up on the second as an unarmed-steal-big guns character (my FO1 character, Sophia, was a pure combatant who wasted some skill points on first aid).

The third probably won't function on my PC, so I'm not worried ;)

I just saw a Fallout thread on 4chan /b/, and now I want to cry my eyes out. Bethesda just tore out all that was good and decent with Fallout and made it into Oblivion... With Guns.

RIP Fallout

Oblivion With Gunz!

Pipboy

Bethesda

More Oblivion

100% Hit Rate


May you burn for all eternity, Bethesda.

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Originally Posted by frogbeastegg

Nooooo! It has weapon degredation! That's one of my most hated 'features' in an RPG! Gah! Where's the point in hunting down a great weapon only to have it break or to be afraid of using it because it might!? It's just as bad if the weapons are easy to repair repeatedly; at that point it becomes a tedious and pointless chore.

There'd better be a toggle or some way to mod it out.

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Probably not, seeing how Oblivion is honestly not that moddable at all.

Look on the bright side, you'll be able to 'fix' your weapons with your repair kits, and as you use the skill to increase it you'll eventually be able to 'fix' your weapons to 125% repaired and it'll improve all weapon hits to automatic criticals with a bonus chance to automatically kill whatever it is in one hit.

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Originally Posted by Orb

Well, I finished the first one recently (completely stunning :bow:) and am starting up on the second as an unarmed-steal-big guns character (my FO1 character, Sophia, was a pure combatant who wasted some skill points on first aid).

The third probably won't function on my PC, so I'm not worried ;)

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Seriously glad to see you are enjoying the originals mate. It's simultaneously amusing and sad to see your comments about the game, esp. the ones in a previous post where you were mentioning your reactions to certain consequences based on how you played. Things like that really are a rarity these days in games that are becoming all too shallow.

@ Kek

LOL!! I'd seen the 3rd pic before, but not the other ones. Here's one of my favorites: http://www.fanmadefallout.com/IMG/ne...b_rpgcodex.gif

My perspective is that while this might not be the Fallout we all waited for, it may not in and of itself be a bad game (heck it would be nice to have something like Stalker only with a coherent plot and which did not crash every 5 minutes)...

Oblivion is not a bad game, a bit repetative maybe with some odd design decisions (I wonder if any RPG will every try leveling the world in line with your character again, plus being head the of goody-two-shoes guild and the dark master at the same time) but it was basically a fully functionaly RPG and fun in parts.

The old console thing is always a worry of course, even as a 360 owner I understand the effect it can have on a previously detailed and deliciously complex PC game...

I am willing to wait an see if they can learn from their mistakes (in Oblivion) and produce something worthy of the Fallout name. It really is in there best interests as a success would guarantee sales for a Fallout 4...

I am having a go at Fallout Tactics finally, fun so far... The improvements to the old engine are nice and I quite like the realtime combat (with some pausing)... I would love to have seen a Fallout RPG made with it... Fallout Episodes perhapes... Kind of like Plup Fallout... :2thumbsup:

Personally I never understood the term "Oblivion with guns" and it's usage as a insult.
First of all, it will be different then oblivion. It will have different leveling system, new combat system, different setting etc. Only thing that is the same is the engine which is improved and that the weapons degrade and even there they are trying something new. So really the only thing oblivion about fallout is the engine and come on, did you really think they would go 1990's and go for the top-down view to please some fans that are determined to bash them whatever they do ??
And 2nd, that term only makes me like the game more.
Oblivion was great if you ignore the leveling and skills system but luckily that won't be in Fallout.

After reading the comments on among other the fallout forum that I posted the link, I must say that I'm not surprised that Bethesda choose to ignore them. Even if Bethesda would have made Fallout 3 to be just like Fallout 2(which I'm really happy that they aren't) they would still get bashed.
Constructive critism is always good but what they are doing isn't.
They think they are doing something good but really they are doing more damage.
So if Bethesda is reading this(you never know, they might be TW fans) then I saw that keep up ignoring them and keep on making a fallout game that is fun and captures world of Fallout perfectly.

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Originally Posted by Whacker

Probably not, seeing how Oblivion is honestly not that moddable at all.

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Ok, now that comment you have to substantiate.

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Originally Posted by TinCow

Ok, now that comment you have to substantiate.

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Certainly sir. What all can you change in that game?

- You can make new textures and models.

- You can script things given a fair number of variables.

- You can also fiddle somewhat with the interface, thank the gods, so that the PC version doesn't have the absolutely deplorable console interface.

What can't you do?

- Add new skills and attributes

- Add/fix existing/new magicka effects (levitation for example)

- Add/fix game mechanics. This is really the biggie in my view. Things such as removing the obnoxious influence game, changing the money/barter system to the previous Morrowind style, giving the magicka/alchemy systems the depth they had in Morrowind, change how combat mechanics work, etc etc etc. All the stuff that's hardcoded and we don't have access to.

- Add new/removed weapon classes like spears, crossbows (yes I know about the admirable but mostly failed attempt), polearms; separation of bladed weapons back to short vs long, axes vs blunt, etc

- Reasonably add new content to existing or new NPCs without doing one's own voiceovers, seeing how the entire game is already VO'd (which is incredibly limiting IMO)

These are largely the same reasons I've repeatedly said M2TW isn't that moddable, even though they claim it to be "modder's heaven." As much as it pains me to admit this, Valve set the bar with their Source engine and the outstanding support they provide to their modding community. The fact that there are thousands of mod projects listed on moddb should tell us something here. Of course ID and Epic have also done bangup jobs, but not on the same scale as Valve. Being able to make a game prettier with new textures and models, and fiddling with a few numeric variables does not remotely qualify as "extensively moddable". Real modding is being able to change core gameplay mechanics to suit an individual's vision on how they want the game to change.

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Originally Posted by Whacker

What can't you do?

- Add new skills and attributes

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True, shame that.

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- Add/fix existing/new magicka effects (levitation for example)

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I've seen plenty of new spell mods, so I don't quite understand. The levitation thing was due to engine limitations caused by making the cities their own cells outside the larger world. If you were able to levitate, you could go over the city walls and would find yourself in the middle of a city that didn't work. Levitiation was cheesy and easy to exploit in Morrowind anyway, so I don't consider it a big loss.

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Add/fix game mechanics. This is really the biggie in my view. Things such as removing the obnoxious influence game, changing the money/barter system to the previous Morrowind style, giving the magicka/alchemy systems the depth they had in Morrowind, change how combat mechanics work, etc etc etc. All the stuff that's hardcoded and we don't have access to.

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The money/barter system can most certainly be modded. You should check out the Living Economy mod which is 10x better than even Morrowind was. Alchemy has been similarly improved by modding as well and I don't see any deficiencies in comparison to Morrowind. I'm not sure what you mean by combat mechanics. If it is the style of swinging and so on, you are correct.

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- Add new/removed weapon classes like spears, crossbows (yes I know about the admirable but mostly failed attempt), polearms; separation of bladed weapons back to short vs long, axes vs blunt, etc

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This is the same thing as the skills/attributes problem, which I agree with.

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- Reasonably add new content to existing or new NPCs without doing one's own voiceovers, seeing how the entire game is already VO'd (which is incredibly limiting IMO)

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NPCs don't have to have voiceovers to work. I've seen plenty of mods with only text and no voice. The majority of them actually (which is a good thing, because most amateur voice acting is horrid). I don't see how this is a limitation at all.

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These are largely the same reasons I've repeatedly said M2TW isn't that moddable, even though they claim it to be "modder's heaven." As much as it pains me to admit this, Valve set the bar with their Source engine and the outstanding support they provide to their modding community. The fact that there are thousands of mod projects listed on moddb should tell us something here. Of course ID and Epic have also done bangup jobs, but not on the same scale as Valve. Being able to make a game prettier with new textures and models, and fiddling with a few numeric variables does not remotely qualify as "extensively moddable". Real modding is being able to change core gameplay mechanics to suit an individual's vision on how they want the game to change.

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True, it basically amounts to changing the content of the game and having to live with the engine it runs on. However, I don't consider that a minor thing, especially with Bethesda games which have the modding tools available from the very day of release. There is far more to Fallout than action points and isometric views. It's the storyline, the atmosphere, and the open-ended questing that are the real gem. That's exactly what can be changed/fixed with the tools Bethesda provides. I very much look forward to the wonderful story and art mods that the dedicated old school Fallout community will surely come up with. I suspect they will make Beth's F3 into a longterm classic.

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Originally Posted by frogbeastegg

Nooooo! It has weapon degredation! That's one of my most hated 'features' in an RPG! Gah! Where's the point in hunting down a great weapon only to have it break or to be afraid of using it because it might!? It's just as bad if the weapons are easy to repair repeatedly; at that point it becomes a tedious and pointless chore.

There'd better be a toggle or some way to mod it out.

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Now that's just wrong! :angry:

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Originally Posted by TinCow

I've seen plenty of new spell mods, so I don't quite understand. The levitation thing was due to engine limitations caused by making the cities their own cells outside the larger world. If you were able to levitate, you could go over the city walls and would find yourself in the middle of a city that didn't work. Levitiation was cheesy and easy to exploit in Morrowind anyway, so I don't consider it a big loss.

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These spell mods are all completely based on existing magicka effects. Show me one that isn't. And I'll just say this once, because it seems to be a pretty common theme in your responses to me. Just because YOU don't like it or want it, doesn't mean there aren't a very large number of others who do. That's an extremely arrogant attitude to take. You will note that in almost all of my previous posts regarding modding in games is to make it so that everyone can find an acceptable solution. That pointless "Take it out because I don't like it" or "I don't care if it's not moddable because it's fine to me" is both selfish and not constructive.

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The money/barter system can most certainly be modded. You should check out the Living Economy mod which is 10x better than even Morrowind was.

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Scripting a few events around the core mechanics is one thing. Changing them back to Morrowind-style "Merchant runs out of cash", "barter skill can eventually cause you to buy items for less than the merchant will pay for them" etc is another thing entirely. If you know of something like this, please point it out.

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Alchemy has been similarly improved by modding as well and I don't see any deficiencies in comparison to Morrowind.

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I am certainly not aware of any along the lines that you mentioned, by all means please educate me if you know of some.

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I'm not sure what you mean by combat mechanics. If it is the style of swinging and so on, you are correct.

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It's far more than just "style of swinging", but yes.

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NPCs don't have to have voiceovers to work. I've seen plenty of mods with only text and no voice.

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I already said this, did you read my post? I said it's very noticable and also pretty lame since they won't jive with the rest of the game. You are talking with an NPC who has a number of things to say, then you go into extended dialogue branches that were added by fans, and he's got nothing to say at all. (non-specific example)

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The majority of them actually (which is a good thing, because most amateur voice acting is horrid).

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That's pretty much what I said earlier, the amatuer stuff can and quite often is a very admirable attempt, but it doesn't come close to the quality of what the studio can produce.

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I don't see how this is a limitation at all.

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It very much is in terms of adding new content, for many reasons including the ones I've mentioned.

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True, it basically amounts to changing the content of the game and having to live with the engine it runs on. However, I don't consider that a minor thing, especially with Bethesda games which have the modding tools available from the very day of release.

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To their credit, Bethesda has done far more than CA has done in terms of 'support'. The Construction Kit certainly has far more functionality than the few 'tools' that CA has given their community, and CA also has an extensive Wiki set up that's contributed to heavily by the devs. This still utterly pales in comparison to what Valve, ID, and Epic have done though.

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There is far more to Fallout than action points and isometric views.

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Nice jab. I've made a point to focus on the issue at hand and not take underhanded digs at you, I expect the same courtesy, esp. from a mod.

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It's the storyline, the atmosphere, and the open-ended questing that are the real gem.

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Wrong, it's far more than that. People don't seem to understand that a game is more than just "story", it's the sum of it's parts, which is precisely why good gameplay mechanics are integral to having a good game. This is incidentally why I've written off FO3, because the original outstanding mechanics have been changed drastically according to that article in the gaming rag. Gameplay isn't just an afterthought, it's a key part to what makes a game and moreso a series successful. Look at the X-com games and how they went downhill after the first two.

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That's exactly what can be changed/fixed with the tools Bethesda provides. I very much look forward to the wonderful story and art mods that the dedicated old school Fallout community will surely come up with. I suspect they will make Beth's F3 into a longterm classic.

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Perhaps, but to the Oblivion FPS crowd, not to the Fallout RPG playing crowd.

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Originally Posted by Whacker

These spell mods are all completely based on existing magicka effects. Show me one that isn't. And I'll just say this once, because it seems to be a pretty common theme in your responses to me. Just because YOU don't like it or want it, doesn't mean there aren't a very large number of others who do. That's an extremely arrogant attitude to take. You will note that in almost all of my previous posts regarding modding in games is to make it so that everyone can find an acceptable solution. That pointless "Take it out because I don't like it" or "I don't care if it's not moddable because it's fine to me" is both selfish and not constructive.


Scripting a few events around the core mechanics is one thing. Changing them back to Morrowind-style "Merchant runs out of cash", "barter skill can eventually cause you to buy items for less than the merchant will pay for them" etc is another thing entirely. If you know of something like this, please point it out.


I am certainly not aware of any along the lines that you mentioned, by all means please educate me if you know of some.


It's far more than just "style of swinging", but yes.


I already said this, did you read my post? I said it's very noticable and also pretty lame since they won't jive with the rest of the game. You are talking with an NPC who has a number of things to say, then you go into extended dialogue branches that were added by fans, and he's got nothing to say at all. (non-specific example)


That's pretty much what I said earlier, the amatuer stuff can and quite often is a very admirable attempt, but it doesn't come close to the quality of what the studio can produce.


It very much is in terms of adding new content, for many reasons including the ones I've mentioned.


To their credit, Bethesda has done far more than CA has done in terms of 'support'. The Construction Kit certainly has far more functionality than the few 'tools' that CA has given their community, and CA also has an extensive Wiki set up that's contributed to heavily by the devs. This still utterly pales in comparison to what Valve, ID, and Epic have done though.



Nice jab. I've made a point to focus on the issue at hand and not take underhanded digs at you, I expect the same courtesy, esp. from a mod.


Wrong, it's far more than that. People don't seem to understand that a game is more than just "story", it's the sum of it's parts, which is precisely why good gameplay mechanics are integral to having a good game. This is incidentally why I've written off FO3, because the original outstanding mechanics have been changed drastically according to that article in the gaming rag. Gameplay isn't just an afterthought, it's a key part to what makes a game and moreso a series successful. Look at the X-com games and how they went downhill after the first two.


Perhaps, but to the Oblivion FPS crowd, not to the Fallout RPG playing crowd.

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OH NO HE DIDANT!

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Originally Posted by Ichigo

OH NO HE DIDANT!

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I still fully expect you to fulfill your role in the chat and defend me against Fizzil and Disco's vicious FO3 attacks when I am not around. :whip:

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Originally Posted by Whacker

I still fully expect you to fulfill your role in the chat and defend me against Fizzil and Disco's vicious FO3 attacks when I am not around. :whip:

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Bah humbug

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Originally Posted by Whacker

I'll just say this once, because it seems to be a pretty common theme in your responses to me. Just because YOU don't like it or want it, doesn't mean there aren't a very large number of others who do. That's an extremely arrogant attitude to take. You will note that in almost all of my previous posts regarding modding in games is to make it so that everyone can find an acceptable solution. That pointless "Take it out because I don't like it" or "I don't care if it's not moddable because it's fine to me" is both selfish and not constructive.

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Whoa, whoa, whoa. I have tried to make it very clear in every single one of my posts that I am talking about my personal opinion. I am not you, so I cannot see the world the way you do. I know what I like so I speak about that and I try to constantly say "in my opinion" or "personally" to make that clear. I am sorry if that comes across as selfish or non-constructive to you. That is not my intention, I simply and expressing my opinion about what I like and don't like about the games I play.

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Scripting a few events around the core mechanics is one thing. Changing them back to Morrowind-style "Merchant runs out of cash", "barter skill can eventually cause you to buy items for less than the merchant will pay for them" etc is another thing entirely. If you know of something like this, please point it out.

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I just did. It's called the Living Economy mod. Merchants have fixed amounts of cash and the run out. The more of an item a merchant has, the less money he will buy it for and vice versa (supply and demand). I don't have a link for it because I'm at work, but it should be very easy to find at any Oblivion modding website. It's even built-in to OOO.

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I am certainly not aware of any along the lines that you mentioned, by all means please educate me if you know of some.

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I don't know the name of them off the top of my head, but there are several built-in to OOO as well. Flora and Fauna something or other? There's a ton of alchemy stuff out there that will mimic any and all game effects.

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I already said this, did you read my post? I said it's very noticable and also pretty lame since they won't jive with the rest of the game. You are talking with an NPC who has a number of things to say, then you go into extended dialogue branches that were added by fans, and he's got nothing to say at all. (non-specific example)

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So what's the alternative, removing all voicing from the game? While I certainly wish there was a great deal more text and speech options, I personally think that the text sounds good when it is spoken. I really, really, really want them to add far more text than they did in Oblivion, but why does that mean they have to take out the voiced parts to make it mesh? For many years now, games have included a mix of text and voice, I think that works just as well with Oblivion as it did with FO1.

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Nice jab. I've made a point to focus on the issue at hand and not take underhanded digs at you, I expect the same courtesy, esp. from a mod.

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This is out of line. My comment was not an attack on you by any means. it was make a differentiation between the content of the game and the game engine. Please re-read my words.

I swear that nothing I am writing is a personal attack on you. Please do not take it that way. If you feel attacked by anything I have written, then I fervently apologize for it. I like responding to your posts because you have a lot of interesting things to say about Fallout and I enjoy discussing them. Your posts have made this a far more interesting thread than simply links to new screenshots.

I doubt we will agree on many aspects of FO3, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy an exchange of ideas in a civil manner. If you don't like discussing this stuff, just say so and I will stop responding to your posts.

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Wrong, it's far more than that. People don't seem to understand that a game is more than just "story", it's the sum of it's parts, which is precisely why good gameplay mechanics are integral to having a good game. This is incidentally why I've written off FO3, because the original outstanding mechanics have been changed drastically according to that article in the gaming rag. Gameplay isn't just an afterthought, it's a key part to what makes a game and moreso a series successful. Look at the X-com games and how they went downhill after the first two.

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In my personal opinion (this whole paragraph is personal opinion), some of the original FO gameplay mechanics were good, but some were not so good. SPECIAL was excellent. Action points were decent, though I thought the Infinity Engine did a better job with combat. FO NPC control was horrible. Inventory control was very poor. The dithering effect when behind obscuring structures was inadequate. The wasteland travel and random encounter systems were primitive and unimaginative. All of these negative things can be improved on radically (in my opinion) and so I think that all of them could be abandoned for completely new gameplay mechanics and actively improve the game. Just because one system worked well doesn't mean another system won't work even better.

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Originally Posted by TinCow

I just did. It's called the Living Economy mod. Merchants have fixed amounts of cash and the run out. The more of an item a merchant has, the less money he will buy it for and vice versa (supply and demand). I don't have a link for it because I'm at work, but it should be very easy to find at any Oblivion modding website. It's even built-in to OOO.

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That's a new one to me, duly noted.

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I don't know the name of them off the top of my head, but there are several built-in to OOO as well. Flora and Fauna something or other? There's a ton of alchemy stuff out there that will mimic any and all game effects.

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Mimicing game effects is one thing, sure. I guess my point is that I'd like to see the alchemy system changed entirely back to the way it worked in Morrowind, save perhaps a few interface improvements. I am not aware of anything that does this, and as I said before, if YOU do, please let me know as I would very much like to take a look.

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So what's the alternative, removing all voicing from the game?

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Happy medium always. Having SOME speech is good and even to be expected. Major cutscenes, major plot events, etc, sure all those definitely I could see having voiceovers. Morrowind did a decent, but by not means perfect, job at this. The key is to make the major points interesting yet not make it so that fan-made content is not going to clash noticably with the original content, and so that new major content can be added in such a manner that it also blends in smoothly. This is where Oblivion falls flat on it's face because of that inherent limitation.

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While I certainly wish there was a great deal more text and speech options, I personally think that the text sounds good when it is spoken. I really, really, really want them to add far more text than they did in Oblivion

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We are of one mind here, absolutely no disagreement.

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, but why does that mean they have to take out the voiced parts to make it mesh?

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They don't have to remove it all, just make it far more balanced. See my response to your earlier point above.

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This is out of line. My comment was not an attack on you by any means. it was make a differentiation between the content of the game and the game engine. Please re-read my words.

I swear that nothing I am writing is a personal attack on you. Please do not take it that way. If you feel attacked by anything I have written, then I fervently apologize for it. I like responding to your posts because you have a lot of interesting things to say about Fallout and I enjoy discussing them. Your posts have made this a far more interesting thread than simply links to new screenshots.

I doubt we will agree on many aspects of FO3, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy an exchange of ideas in a civil manner. If you don't like discussing this stuff, just say so and I will stop responding to your posts.

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Freely given, freely accepted. My apologies for my harsh reaction, but I couldn't think of any other way to take it as such. Perhaps I need to stop spending time in the backroom, there are a lot of very angry people back there. :dizzy2:

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In my personal opinion (this whole paragraph is personal opinion), some of the original FO gameplay mechanics were good, but some were not so good. SPECIAL was excellent.

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Singing the same song we are.

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Action points were decent, though I thought the Infinity Engine did a better job with combat.

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Meh, Bioware did a good job with making their engines work smoothly in their games. Real turn-based still has it's appeal and place. This is perhaps where we diverge in that I don't think anything other than REAL turn-based works or meshes well with the FO setting.

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FO NPC control was horrible. Inventory control was very poor. The dithering effect when behind obscuring structures was inadequate.

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Preaching to the choir my friend. In fact you are dead wrong, inventory control was/is mind-numbingly aggravating. And I swear I almost had an aneurism trying to keep Dogmeat alive in the Military base.

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The wasteland travel and random encounter systems were primitive and unimaginative.

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Partially disagree here. Primitive... meh, by today's standards sure. Unimaginative? Are you nuts?? The Monty Python skits in FO2 had me laughing so hard my wife came in to see what I was making a racket about. The random encounter system worked fine, and in such a manner that it seriously discouraged exploring certain areas unless you'd worked getting better gear and stats. I still got my tookiss handed to me at lvl 21 with HPA near the military base, when I was jumped every 1cm by a full band of super mutes, all carrying chainguns and rocket launchers.

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All of these negative things can be improved on radically (in my opinion) and so I think that all of them could be abandoned for completely new gameplay mechanics and actively improve the game. Just because one system worked well doesn't mean another system won't work even better.

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Well said, but the other side of the coin is that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." I think this is largely one of my major problems with Bethesda in general, in that they now seem to have a very arrogant mindset that everything they touch will be gold after their Oblivion success, and they can ignore canon and precedent completely because "that previous stuff is old and busted". The sad thing is, they have enough of a fanbase at this point that the game probably will sell just fine if not well, and they'll be sure to buy absolutely glowing reviews from the major sites to "validate" this. I guess the other bit to that is they keep seeming to think they can redefine certain aspects of established genres because their sales successes 'gave them the right to'. I admittedly have not played any of their previous games except Morrowind and Oblivion, but it seems to me and others that they've firmly decided to go down the route of making action games and "deep" FPS's, and abandoning their roots of making more traditional RPG's. This in of itself doesn't bother me at all, as I said it's the fact that they have the arrogance to say "Oh it's definitely an RPG because we say it is" re: whatever product they are making, when in reality it couldn't be further from that. /shrug Take all that as you will and with a requisite amount of salt. :grin:

In the interests of candor, I will state again something I have said before: I am good friends with two Bethsoft employees. I would be lying if I said this didn't influence me. In fact, I'm actually pretty biased in their favor and everything I say needs to be taken with that in mind. To be fair, I had been a big fan of Bethsoft games before I even met them, but knowing people behind the product has had an impact. Perhaps I defend them more than I should as a result.

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Originally Posted by Whacker

Happy medium always. Having SOME speech is good and even to be expected. Major cutscenes, major plot events, etc, sure all those definitely I could see having voiceovers. Morrowind did a decent, but by not means perfect, job at this. The key is to make the major points interesting yet not make it so that fan-made content is not going to clash noticably with the original content, and so that new major content can be added in such a manner that it also blends in smoothly. This is where Oblivion falls flat on it's face because of that inherent limitation.

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This was actually the first thing I said to the first of the Bethsoft guys I met. "Why did you cut down on the text?!" I was disappointed in the answer: upper level managed decided that voice sells, especially on consoles, and thus everything has to be voiced. I was very disappointed with the drastic cutback in text from ES3 to ES 4. Last week one of the Bethsoft guys asked me my opinion on the Game Insider preview. It was a mixed and hopeful response, but I really ranted about my fears about putting Oblivion's limited dialog into FO3. FO were dialog based games for me and I am seriously concerned that the voice-only policy will really limit FO3. I'm hoping that they will realize this and instead pay a lot more money to the actors to voice several times the quantity of dialog that they did in Oblivion.

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Originally Posted by Whacker

Meh, Bioware did a good job with making their engines work smoothly in their games. Real turn-based still has it's appeal and place. This is perhaps where we diverge in that I don't think anything other than REAL turn-based works or meshes well with the FO setting.

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Yeah, definitely a difference of opinion here. For RPGs, I separate the combat from the storyline. It's odd, but many CRPGs end up more as strategy games than true RPGs. That's probably one of the reasons I like them so much. That said, I find an engrossing story just as compelling as a good strategy game. Morrowind is the perfect example. The combat was pretty boring, especially when you hit high levels. I played that game for more hours than I can count, but it was never for the combat. I felt the same way about Vampire: Bloodlines. By comparison, I also loved Icewind Dale 1 & 2, which were not really RPGs at all. They were dungeon hacking tactical games and I enjoyed them at that level.

The way I feel about Fallout can be explained by my feelings about Fallout Tactics (which I'm currently replaying). Ignoring the storyline and violations of canon, the actual game itself is interesting and entertaining right up to the point where it moves off into robot-o-doom. At that point it quickly becomes boring for me because it leaves the wrecked towns, the inhabited wasteland, the struggle for normalcy in a post-apocalyptic world, and it simply becomes Fallout style combat in a different setting. I lose interest because I miss the atmosphere which I associate with Fallout. I've never seen a Fallout game with the atmosphere but without the combat, so I don't know for sure if I would like that, but I suspect that what I really enjoy most is simply the wasteland existence.

I liked Morrowind and Oblivion because I liked living in the world they created. They're definitely not the most entertaining games if you're looking for specific objectives or goals, but I realized that early on and stopped trying to find them. In contrast, I also enjoyed Doom 3 a great deal, far more than most other people did it seems. I knew from the start what it was good at and played it with those strengths in mind. I only played at night, turned off all the lights, pumped up my sound, and sat really close to the monitor. I then enjoyed what was essentially the computer game equivalent of a haunted house. I will probably never play the game a second time, but I loved it for what it was: an experience.

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Partially disagree here. Primitive... meh, by today's standards sure. Unimaginative? Are you nuts?? The Monty Python skits in FO2 had me laughing so hard my wife came in to see what I was making a racket about. The random encounter system worked fine, and in such a manner that it seriously discouraged exploring certain areas unless you'd worked getting better gear and stats. I still got my tookiss handed to me at lvl 21 with HPA near the military base, when I was jumped every 1cm by a full band of super mutes, all carrying chainguns and rocket launchers.

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LOL, I wasn't criticizing the actual special encounters, just the general ones and the manner in which they occurred (running around on the world map and clicking yes or no depending on your outdoorsman skill). I love the pop culture references in all their ridiculous glory. When I said unimaginative, I'm talking about your 37th encounter with bootleggers fighting slavers.

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Well said, but the other side of the coin is that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." I think this is largely one of my major problems with Bethesda in general, in that they now seem to have a very arrogant mindset that everything they touch will be gold after their Oblivion success, and they can ignore canon and precedent completely because "that previous stuff is old and busted". The sad thing is, they have enough of a fanbase at this point that the game probably will sell just fine if not well, and they'll be sure to buy absolutely glowing reviews from the major sites to "validate" this. I guess the other bit to that is they keep seeming to think they can redefine certain aspects of established genres because their sales successes 'gave them the right to'. I admittedly have not played any of their previous games except Morrowind and Oblivion, but it seems to me and others that they've firmly decided to go down the route of making action games and "deep" FPS's, and abandoning their roots of making more traditional RPG's. This in of itself doesn't bother me at all, as I said it's the fact that they have the arrogance to say "Oh it's definitely an RPG because we say it is" re: whatever product they are making, when in reality it couldn't be further from that. /shrug Take all that as you will and with a requisite amount of salt. :grin:

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What I take from this is that you think they're guilty of false advertising. I have to agree with you on this because it's true. Their marketing department does one heck of a job. It would definitely be nice if they just straight out said what they where making. The secrecy is designed to focus more and more attention on the game. While that works wonders in driving up publicity, it inevitably disappoints people who interpreted their ambiguous words wrongly. I think there would be far fewer hostile feelings towards them if they would simply say "We're making a first person game in the Fallout universe. We're making a storyline that we think is fun but which doesn't mesh 100% with canon. We're abandoning most of the Fallout combat system because it doesn't mesh with our engine." If they did that, then people who didn't like the sound of the game would go away and ignore it and those who did would stick around. Everyone wins, but the sales are probably a bit lower. :thumbsdown:

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Originally Posted by Whacker

Things such as removing the obnoxious influence game

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Actually, that was one of the first mods I got. That mini-game was very anti-immersion imo, so I was glad to see a mod replace it.

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Originally Posted by TinCow

In the interests of candor, I will state again something I have said before: I am good friends with two Bethsoft employees. I would be lying if I said this didn't influence me. In fact, I'm actually pretty biased in their favor and everything I say needs to be taken with that in mind. To be fair, I had been a big fan of Bethsoft games before I even met them, but knowing people behind the product has had an impact. Perhaps I defend them more than I should as a result.

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Hah, we're very much alike, I also have several friends "in the biz." What's even funnier is they've worked exclusively on games that I hate. One of them worked on Ghost Recon, and we already had the time-honored "Why Operation Flashpoint was a bazillion times better than Ghost Recon" argument a few times. I guess the sticking point is, can you criticize your friend's company and games (heavily even) from a more "professional" standpoint, aka as the gamer/customer, without them getting offended personally as a friend?

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This was actually the first thing I said to the first of the Bethsoft guys I met. "Why did you cut down on the text?!" I was disappointed in the answer: upper level managed decided that voice sells, especially on consoles, and thus everything has to be voiced.

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Bah, "Upper management" and the Marketing types are squarely to blame for the mind numbing lack of originality in terms of gaming today. Don't even get me started on the whole "Why consoles are partially to blame for the dumbing down of gaming"...

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In contrast, I also enjoyed Doom 3 a great deal, far more than most other people did it seems. I knew from the start what it was good at and played it with those strengths in mind. I only played at night, turned off all the lights, pumped up my sound, and sat really close to the monitor. I then enjoyed what was essentially the computer game equivalent of a haunted house. I will probably never play the game a second time, but I loved it for what it was: an experience.

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I also enjoyed the :daisy: out of Doom 3, whereas a good deal of my friends thought it was mindless trash (go figure....). The key, as you so well pointed out, was to LET yourself be immersed. It was kinda hard to play it at night w/my headphones on, and my poor dog almost gave me a heart attack at one point when she came into my room unseen and nosed my leg. Also I was... erm... "inebriated" and on Teamspeak with a few friends when I finally got to Hell, that was almost a religious experience in of itself. They told me the next morning all I kept saying was "Oh... my... gawd...." and making various quotes from Event Horizon.

As for Morrowind and Oblivion, my view is that Morrowind offered a much deeper game to immerse oneself in. There were levels of complexity and enough storyline and diverse tasks to provide for a feeling of just how big the overall world was and how much there was to do. Oblivion didn't give me that whatsoever, it was basically a pretty setting to run around and kill stuff with fire. The "wow this looks great" factor tends to wear off with me very quickly with games, usually within an hour or two, at which point I start to concentrate on the story and mechanics, esp. in RPGs. This was when I started down the dark path of indifference leading up to rejection.

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When I said unimaginative, I'm talking about your 37th encounter with bootleggers fighting slavers.

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Putting it that way, I'd have to agree wholehearted with you there. There wasn't a heck of a lot of variety in that area, esp. in FO1. FO2 helped that a bit, but not much.

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What I take from this is that you think they're guilty of false advertising. I have to agree with you on this because it's true.

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I guess to simplify it, in principle yes that's a fair way to paraphrase it. It's not really that they do it, it's that they are doing it with a very neglected, dying genre that I am having withdrawl from. Sadly that's now what I tend to expect from the PR types at publishers and studios; nothing but pure BS and hype as opposed to real, well thought-out, and meaningful attempts to portray their products. Pretty much all you need these days is a large chested female brandishing a gun and a sword, making a messy headshot on critter A while simultaneously decapitating critter B in some action-packed setting, swearing up a storm while doing so, with huge explosions in the background.

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Their marketing department does one heck of a job. It would definitely be nice if they just straight out said what they where making.

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I'd have to disagree with you here, I think their marketing department is one of the worst in the business today. I share the general opinion with quite a few others that Todd and Pete are egotistical morons, and the gaming industry is suffering indirectly from the PR nonsense they are pulling now with FO3 and with Oblivion. Seriously, "Soil erosion"? There was(is?) a large compilation of quotes and sales bits made from the time leading up to Oblivion, and comparing them against what the actual product had. While many of them are indeed subjective, it's not hard to see overall that almost every single one of them was one of 1. blatant lie, 2. extremely inaccurate, or 3. gross exaggeration. Stunts and regular behavior like this means it's not hard to realize why so few of us take these people seriously anymore. If I can find the link to that bit, I'll PM it to you, it's at least good for a laugh even if you may not agree. :beam:

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The secrecy is designed to focus more and more attention on the game. While that works wonders in driving up publicity, it inevitably disappoints people who interpreted their ambiguous words wrongly. I think there would be far fewer hostile feelings towards them if they would simply say "We're making a first person game in the Fallout universe. We're making a storyline that we think is fun but which doesn't mesh 100% with canon. We're abandoning most of the Fallout combat system because it doesn't mesh with our engine." If they did that, then people who didn't like the sound of the game would go away and ignore it and those who did would stick around. Everyone wins, but the sales are probably a bit lower. :thumbsdown:

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Exactly, dead on. The all encompassing absolute bottom line, profit. There was an editorial bit written not too long ago about the general state of gaming today, and how publishers will generally strive to maximize sales, and will 'dumb down'/simplify/whatever you want to call it to their games in order to try to reach the largest number of buyers. It made complete sense to me, I mean look at the market for REAL simulation games and even RPGs right now, it's pretty thin to almost non-existent. Heck look at what CA is doing with the TW series... The gist of the article was that despite this overall trend, there are still good numbers of gamers in all respective genres that would make putting together a 'niche' game a very viable prospect financially. The obvious problem is that while it would sell, it wouldn't sell say as good as Madden 2k8 or whatever, and hence why the Execs/Marketing types would do their utmost to force the product back into that generic Let's Try To Please Everyone role. Again it all makes sense to me, it'd be real nice to see someone take that to heart and take the plunge. Perhaps it's just me being obstinate and refusing to believe/accept that real RPG players and flight sim fanatics are a dying breed. :embarassed:

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Originally Posted by Xiahou

Actually, that was one of the first mods I got. That mini-game was very anti-immersion imo, so I was glad to see a mod replace it.

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I would love to have a link to such a critter if you could provide one good sir.

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Originally Posted by Whacker

I would love to have a link to such a critter if you could provide one good sir.

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I think this is the one I DL'ed.

Here's the summary:

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This mod gets rid of the persuasion mini-game in Oblivion and replaces it with a system that is more realistic and better balanced. I feel that the current system is deficient in a number of ways:
- It's relatively easy to raise someone's disposition at or near 100 with only an average speechcraft skill, making it nearly pointless to raise this skill to its highest level.
- While the security mini-game simulates picking a lock, the persuasion game is a completely abstract exercise in lining up rotating wedges. You must say the same things to every character, and your success is only dependent on the order in which you say them. R-i-i-i-ight.
- Persuasion as implemented leaves little room for role playing. You must coerce, boast, admire and joke with every person you meet, regardless of your character's personality and values, or the type of person you are talking to.

Instead, this mod implements persuasion through regular dialogue. You are free to pick any option you want, and either try the same one over and over or alternate between many. Each time you pick an option, you have a base chance of success based on your speechcraft skill. Then, your chances are modified based on the current disposition of the NPC. The higher their disposition, the harder it is to raise it further. Finally, each option has an individual modifier based on a number of factors (see the Modifiers section below), making it easier or harder to use that option with a particular NPC. For instance, you will have a much easier time coercing a farmer than you will the Arena Grand Champion, and the burly Nord in the local tavern will be more impressed by your boasting than will the Countess of Chorrol, etc. In this way, there is some amount of player skill and role playing required for successful persuasion rather than randomly clicking options.

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:2thumbsup:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Whacker

...

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I shall respond to that post in a new thread, since I don't want to pull the FO3 thread off-topic.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=87427

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TinCow

The way I feel about Fallout can be explained by my feelings about Fallout Tactics (which I'm currently replaying). Ignoring the storyline and violations of canon, the actual game itself is interesting and entertaining right up to the point where it moves off into robot-o-doom. At that point it quickly becomes boring for me because it leaves the wrecked towns, the inhabited wasteland, the struggle for normalcy in a post-apocalyptic world, and it simply becomes Fallout style combat in a different setting. I lose interest because I miss the atmosphere which I associate with Fallout. I've never seen a Fallout game with the atmosphere but without the combat, so I don't know for sure if I would like that, but I suspect that what I really enjoy most is simply the wasteland existence.

---

I really have to agree with you there, it a flavour/atmosphere thing to me more than a mechanics thing (though the dialog system will be of huge importance)... I want to revisit that world and I am not too concerned about the perspective I am viewing it from when I get there...

To be honest I got the first tingling of the "Where has the Wateland gone" right at the end of FO2 (though the RPG elements persisted of course, it did not totally devolve into a big tech fight)... And now in Tactics it is fine while you are out and about on missions, but it feels too sterile back at the bunker and by the sound of it that will only get worse...

Who are we kidding? Unless the reviews are gawd-awful, we all know we're going to buy and play it. Stop pretending you won't, you're only hurting yourself.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lemur

Who are we kidding? Unless the reviews are gawd-awful, we all know we're going to buy and play it. Stop pretending you won't, you're only hurting yourself.

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Honestly I can't tell if you were kidding or not mate, but in all seriousness I am most definitely not going to be getting/playing this game based on the current information we have. Disco has already been telling me the exact same thing in the chat for a week or more now, and it's not working as I think he'd like it to. :grin:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Whacker

Honestly I can't tell if you were kidding or not mate, but in all seriousness I am most definitely not going to be getting/playing this game based on the current information we have. Disco has already been telling me the exact same thing in the chat for a week or more now, and it's not working as I think he'd like it to. :grin:

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The first stage is denial.

I probably won't buy it, and I don't have any huge expectations for the game. I loved Morrowind to death and Bethesda lost a lot of rep with me over Oblivion. I fear that they, much like Creative Assembly, have sold out to the lowest common denominator of customers.

Something's in the air, and that means that Fallout 3 previews are popping up like zits on a teenaged face. Here's a sampling:

Gamespot

Shacknews

Games Radar

Destructoid

Critical Hits

Joystiq

Next-Gen

There's more, but I'm getting tired of typing them. Stop pretending you won't play this game. You're only hurting yourself.

Lemur-san, you are mistaken.

Whether or not I (certainly) would buy this game, my computer doubtless won't run it, thus inuring me to disappointment.

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From the Gamespot preview - Weapons and armor will deteriorate with use, but you'll be able to restore them by using your character's repair skill along with duplicate versions of whatever you're repairing. In other words, you can cannibalize parts from one item to fix another, as long as they're identical. You can't strip parts from a pistol to repair an assault rifle; you have to have the same version of assault rifle. As weapons break down, their capabilities worsen. For example, the weapon's rate of fire will slow, its accuracy will decrease, and so on. Having a fully restored weapon versus one that's falling apart is like the difference between night and day. Or, you can create your own weapons from various parts.

---

Sounds like the deteriorating and reparing of weapons will be a little more involved and logical than the "bang it with a hammer" approach of Oblivion...

There's so much news coming out so fast, I was getting a little dizzy trying to track it all down and decipher the meanings. And the longstanding Fallout boards are just, well, mean. They're lovers who've been spurned so often that all of their affection has metastasized into hate.

So I found a neat little Fallout blog that's doing a good job of posting the relevant new info as it emerges. Thought I'd share.

Well, with all due fairness, the meanness of the fallout boards lately is as much because of the number of people who've decided to come in and start flaming. They're certainly opinionated on a normal basis, but as of late they're also the bear people can't seem to poke enough with the stick.


As for the game itself, most of what they've shown so far has potential. Unfortunately, it's pretty much universally potential to be great, but also potential to stink to high holy heaven.

After being burned twice with Morrowind and Oblivion, I'm expecting it to be an 'eventually pick it up when it hits the $19.99 mark'. I'd rather hope for a used game, since at least that way I'm not putting any cash into Bethesda's coffers before I know if it's gonna suck or not, but used PC games are very hard to find anymore.

If the duck and cover and NMA guys give it raving reviews, then I'd probably buy full price. But they won't. And the rest of the gaming media and community...well, they talked me into Oblivion, so I don't trust them much.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Phatose

They're certainly opinionated on a normal basis, but as of late they're also the bear people can't seem to poke enough with the stick.

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This is very true. I still find myself reading NMA a couple times a week for the 'gawk-factor.' Why is that? What is so compelling about that group that draws people to watch it even when they don't really care about what the people are arguing about?

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Originally Posted by TinCow

This is very true. I still find myself reading NMA a couple times a week for the 'gawk-factor.' Why is that? What is so compelling about that group that draws people to watch it even when they don't really care about what the people are arguing about?

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Because some of us actually agree with some or all of what they are saying. The hard truth and reality of it is that the Fallout franchise and games have survived only because of the hardcore fans like them, not through other developer's attempts at actively destroying the game. Witness FOB(P)OS.

The problem is twofold as I see it, and neither trumps the other.

First, you have the 'hardcore' Fallout types, of which a few vocal minority ruin it for the rest of us. These few are extremely rude, condescending, and do nothing but flame and complain loudly and the most extravagant manner possible. You want to see a real jerk? Look up some posts by a guy named "Roshambo" on the NMA and RPGcodex forums. He epitomizes everything that is wrong with us self-identified 'old school' types.

Second, you have the hideous amounts of incredibly ignorant and equally as obnoxious and loud Bethesda Fanboys©. If anything these guys annoy me more, because Fanboyism in any shape or form is the bane of my gaming existence. The deal is there seems to be far more of these people, and when you get these guys going with a good head of steam, it can often tend to draw the FPS crowd types that Beth has hooked with Oblivion right along with them, thus creating this hellish synergy. Combine this with the NMA rude types, and you've got a seething mass of sheer hatred and angst that can really destroy braincells of people who suffer through reading those posts. "Bethesda can do no wrong, You guys need to get with the times, Turn-based is old and busted, These are definitely RPGs and you guys have no clue even though you've been playing real RPGs since before quite a few of us were born", etc etc etc. It's all just one big mass of :rolleyes:.

My opinion hasn't changed one bit on this game since we finally started getting info. I was hopefully skeptical, then disgusted when my fears were realized. No turn-based combat, SPECIAL appears to have been gutted contrary to what many say, just like what Beth did with Arena to Daggerfall to Morrowind to Oblivion, and instead of super mutants we have something that resembles The Hulk Meets A Cave Troll, coupled with the super mega awesome Nukuler Warhead Launcher. As I still say, more power to the folks who look forward to this game and can possibly enjoy it. It's definitely off my radar though.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Phatose

Well, with all due fairness, the meanness of the fallout boards lately is as much because of the number of people who've decided to come in and start flaming.

---

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Whacker

Second, you have the hideous amounts of incredibly ignorant and equally as obnoxious and loud Bethesda Fanboys©.

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I'm sure the Bethesda fanbois are a pain, but please, I gotta call both of you on this. The Fallout fan boards were brimming with hate long, long before Bethesda was even rumored to be purchasing the rights to Fallout. If some clueless Oblivion-loving fellows have made themselves convenient targets, well, that's too bad for them, isn't it?

But the hate and anger go a lot deeper, and are much older than what you're implying. Heck, I remember how ugly things were getting on the Interplay boards around the time of Fallout Tactics. This is an old anger, a deep, entrenched grudge. I wouldn't be even slightly surprised if, upon their deaths, some of the haters from NMA begin coming back to hate from the dead. It will all be very J-horror, you know, "Play this web game and ten days later you die."

All this talk has made me dig out the old Oblivion for the PC and get some of those mods in... With something to kill the leveling system it works much better... And with a better system that prevented you being the holiest holy and the evilest evil at the same time and better definied NPCs it would have been a way better RPG experience IMO...

As they have basically promised these items for Fallout 3 I don't think it is all doom and gloom as long as you can deal with the whole FPS nature of the gameplay...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lemur

I'm sure the Bethesda fanbois are a pain, but please, I gotta call both of you on this. The Fallout fan boards were brimming with hate long, long before Bethesda was even rumored to be purchasing the rights to Fallout. If some clueless Oblivion-loving fellows have made themselves convenient targets, well, that's too bad for them, isn't it?

But the hate and anger go a lot deeper, and are much older than what you're implying. Heck, I remember how ugly things were getting on the Interplay boards around the time of Fallout Tactics. This is an old anger, a deep, entrenched grudge. I wouldn't be even slightly surprised if, upon their deaths, some of the haters from NMA begin coming back to hate from the dead. It will all be very J-horror, you know, "Play this web game and ten days later you die."

---

There are definitely some very pissed off, nearly insane fallout fanboys out there, who have been for a long time. And, well, if FO2 wasn't FO enough to please these guys, then between FOT, BoS, and FO3, they're gonna be nuts.

Find me a community without a psycho or two and I'll show you a very small community.

It's just these days, even the more mild of the Fallout Fans are being aggravated for sport. It's more then just the extremists. It's the entire community. And while there are certainly Bethesda fanboys who are there just to preach, there are also plenty of people there who really have no stake in the matter whatsoever who are just there because they heard fallout fans were all nuts and want to throw the rock at the hornets nests.

Repeat this everywhere on the net, and the entire community is gonna be on edge.



@Bob:

Well, they haven't actually promised to kill the leveling system. It's been altered so at to not be so far reaching, but "fit zone to player level" is still in there.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Phatose

Well, they haven't actually promised to kill the leveling system. It's been altered so at to not be so far reaching, but "fit zone to player level" is still in there.

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And where have you read that ??
I know that they said that level scaling is gone and just like in Fallout there are areas that you can't enter if you are too low-level.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Whacker

Because some of us actually agree with some or all of what they are saying. The hard truth and reality of it is that the Fallout franchise and games have survived only because of the hardcore fans like them, not through other developer's attempts at actively destroying the game. Witness FOB(P)OS.

---

That doesn't explain it at all. How can the reason behind my interest be "some of us actually agree" when I don't agree? It seems to me to be more of a Jerry Springeresque episode in text form. It's not actually interesting, but it's too mesmerizing to turn away.

And sorry, but I most certainly do not agree that the Fallout franchise has survived because of hardcore fans like them. If anything, I would say it has survived in spite of them. If the franchise had truly survived because of them, it would have survived in the original FO1/FO2 format. We are now three games and a decade past that, with nothing even approaching a return to the original format at all. The only attempt at doing it (Van Buren) was canceled.

No, Fallout has survived simply because the underlying concept was so damned good that it is consistently appealing, in whatever form it takes. Fallout is still alive today because of the stylish post-apoc setting that it embodies, not because of action points.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TB666

And where have you read that ??
I know that they said that level scaling is gone and just like in Fallout there are areas that you can't enter if you are too low-level.

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He is right, it is referenced in the blog linked above...

Areas of the world that you have not entered yet level up with the player as a whole within limited parameters (minimum and maximum levels I guess) until you enter that area at which point it's overall level is locked and will not change should you return later with your now higher level character...

Kind of maintain the challenge, but still having initially dangerous places and preventing bandits appearing in the best gear... Sort of have your cake and eat it... Will have to see if it works...

Finally, I totally agree with TinCow's summary on the popularity of the setting of Fallout rather than the mechanics...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TB666

And where have you read that ??
I know that they said that level scaling is gone and just like in Fallout there are areas that you can't enter if you are too low-level.

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http://fallout3.wordpress.com/2007/0...-on-fallout-3/



As for why fallout's alive, it's not mechanics or setting.
It's just that using somebodies existing world was cheaper then making up a new one. It's not the special romance of fallout, or the dedication of fans to SPECIAL, or the setting or the ambiance or anything.

They could've bought a road warrior license, or made up their own post-apoc setting. This was cheaper. They're obviously not gunning for the existing fanbase, so it's not like they're trying to cash in on the warm and fuzzy feeling people get from the name.

It's that Interplay was having a fire sale, and Bethesda felt like diversifying. Nothing more then that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Phatose

They could've bought a road warrior license, or made up their own post-apoc setting. This was cheaper.

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What a strange thing to say. They paid a good deal of money for the license, and they could have gotten rights to Wasteland for much less. There are tons of post-apocalypse books they could have plundered for less money. And how do you figure that doing their own take on the genre would be more expensive than paying a few million for an existing property?

I mean, hey, dump on Bethesda all you like, but try to make sense when you do so.

How much do you think a skilled designer or team of designers to fully develop a brand new IP, that has to be marketable and usable in a game, is going to cost?

They've got to create the entire world, smooth out incosistencies, create a style and theme, populate it in a way that won't have lawyers for other post apoc IP looking for a lawsuit, while at the same time ensuring it's going to be usable in a game and marketable?


Developing a new IP ain't cheap. Even getting an underdeveloped one up to snuff is going to cost quite a bit. This is the root of why people buy IP to begin with, or license other peoples.

I think we may be forgeting the geek factor... I mean the accounts at Bethsoft may not be geeks but the project management surely is and many of the programmers and there is plently of Kudos in the gaming world associated with a name like Fallout...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Phatose

Developing a new IP ain't cheap. Even getting an underdeveloped one up to snuff is going to cost quite a bit. This is the root of why people buy IP to begin with, or license other peoples.

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Well, this is all a bit meaningless without some real data to back up your claims. Who says they have to have skilled designers? Why can't they hire hacks? If they're as cost-conscious as you assert, I can't see why they wouldn't. There are plenty of ways to cut corners and lower costs. BMX-XXX is a prime example. No expensive design involved.

Your assertion that paying several million dollars for a ten-year-old IP was done for cost savings is kinda out there, and unless you can find some data to support it, I'm gonna have to walk away whistling.

Not only that, they purchased an IP with a large fanbase that is openly hostile to them. And there's not "only a few of them" (us, since Beth isn't on my good side lately?) either, despite what some may think.

Oi, people! Let the game come out first before setting it on fire will ya?

I'm not keeping high hopes because high hopes always disappoint me :P Will be waiting 'round here for word of mouth from fellow Org members before jumping the gun, but if it's not going to be world-shattering stellar then at least it probably won't be too bad...unless you go in with an attitude of "this is gonna sucks no matter what" which I suspect some of you already take.

As a never-played-Fallout-in-my-life outsider I have to agree with TB666 however, I don't think Bethesda was trying to "save" money by buying a game franchise at a seven digits price; after all, they seem to do just fine with their Elder Scrolls franchise even though the latest installment, Oblivion, is really just Generic Fantasy Storyline 101 at its core. Rather, I think it's because Fallout sounds so cool. Post Apocalyptic world RPG's -- set in California no less, and with the 50's atmosphere -- aren't very common this side of the Pacific. You've got to be pretty good to make it work in a Western RPG really.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AntiochusIII

Post Apocalyptic world RPG's -- set in California no less, and with the 50's atmosphere -- aren't very common this side of the Pacific. You've got to be pretty good to make it work in a Western RPG really.

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Well Fallout 3 will be set on the east coast if I remember correctly.
However saying that the are saving money by buying the rights to fallout 3 is a bit strange.
They spent alot of money getting the license and it would have been cheaper for them to make their own post-apocalyptic world.
Of course it would be alot more work for them to create the background story, design, animals and other critters etc which they get with the fallout license.

But agree, let's wait until the game comes out before bashing it.
It may turn out to be a good sequel or may turn out bad.
I guess that's what makes it interesting and I will try to keep an open mind about things.

NMA snuck two reporters into a walkthrough Bethesda held in Germany. Sweet! Full article here.

NMA's staff covering this consists of Brother None (referred to as "I" in the preview) and SuAside, both of whom applied for the demo showing in name of another media company: Brother None thanks to GamerNode, SuAside thanks to MadShrimps.be. Silencer, who applied in the name of NMA, was turned down with no reason given (though it is worth noting he applied last, a day after Brother None's appointment was finalized). SuAside saw the demo Friday at 12:00, Brother None at 14:00, so details vary and it will be noted in the walkthrough when they do significantly. At no point in the demo or Q&A did NMA's staff identify themselves as from NMA.

Those sneaky fellas. Kudos!

Those two NMA guys did a remarkably good job of being objective and I salute them for reporting things exactly as they saw it. I really do not see much bias at all in their recounting of events... it's simply what they saw. The summary is far more biased, but it's an expression of how they feel, so that's to be expected. Even so, I agree with much of what they said.

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Fallout 3 looks like a well-produced, very pretty, very fun game that'll provide quite a few people with a lot of hours of enjoyment. However, I don't think it's anything more than a very pretty and fun game.

...

But what does that mean? Pretty much that we're looking at a pretty bland, uninspired game here, and that people expecting the next big break-through in RPGs or gaming in general to come from here should probably look the other way. And who knows how it'll hold up against competing RPG or RPG-like games in late 2008? Only time will tell. But suffice it to say that despite flashes of brilliances, I'm not overly impressed by this game, and hate to see a franchise tag that once stood for being so different now applied to something that is so humdrum and potentially dull.

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I think this is spot on (except for the potentially dull comment). The more I read about it, the less I think it will really be a true 'Fallout' game. That said, I don't really see that as a negative. Sure, another isometric Fallout clone would be interesting, but I won't die without one. As long as it is a fun ride, it will be worth the ticket price.

Apparently, in the demo, a super mutant got his leg blown off with a .22 caliber bullet.

This is the size of a pistol that fires a .22:

http://www.conjay.com/_borders/NAA_LR_002.jpg

So I guess one must hope they still going to work on that, or maybe they're just exploding limb happy.

CR

I don't get these calibres. IIRC, in the original Fallouts, there was a hulking pistol called the .223 which did a lot of damage. A google search suggests that calibre is roughly equivalent to the 5.56mm NATO round. I'm not sure why an extra 0.003 should make a big difference. :shrug:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lemur

NMA snuck two reporters into a walkthrough Bethesda held in Germany. Sweet! Full article here.

NMA's staff covering this consists of Brother None (referred to as "I" in the preview) and SuAside, both of whom applied for the demo showing in name of another media company: Brother None thanks to GamerNode, SuAside thanks to MadShrimps.be. Silencer, who applied in the name of NMA, was turned down with no reason given (though it is worth noting he applied last, a day after Brother None's appointment was finalized). SuAside saw the demo Friday at 12:00, Brother None at 14:00, so details vary and it will be noted in the walkthrough when they do significantly. At no point in the demo or Q&A did NMA's staff identify themselves as from NMA.

Those sneaky fellas. Kudos!

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You know, I'm actually slightly encouraged by the Q&A excerpts. It seems that the devs are really trying to be respectful of the series while trying to design a game that won't be a complete flop. But the truth is, I really won't know how it is until I've actually played it. :shrug:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by econ21

I don't get these calibres. IIRC, in the original Fallouts, there was a hulking pistol called the .223 which did a lot of damage. A google search suggests that calibre is roughly equivalent to the 5.56mm NATO round. I'm not sure why an extra 0.003 should make a big difference. :shrug:

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It's not the size so much as the power, in gunpowder, behind the bullet. The .223 is a bit longer, not just wider.

That gives the .223 much more kinetic energy than the .22.

The .223 is a rifle cartridge, but there are a few unique pistols that can fire it, and it would have much more power than a normal pistol round.

Here's a size comparison:
The .22 is on the left (well, a air gun pellet is on the extreme left), the .223 is in the middle (I'm not quite sure on the one on the right):
http://www.basc.org.uk/media/rifle_ammo.jpg

CR

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Fallout 3 looks like a well-produced, very pretty, very fun game that'll provide quite a few people with a lot of hours of enjoyment. However, I don't think it's anything more than a very pretty and fun game.

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And having a very pretty and fun game is bad ??:inquisitive:
All I look for in a game is a pretty and fun game.
I really don't know what the NMA people want and the more I read from them the more I get confirmed that they want something that has and never will happened.
Fallout series was suppose to be a fun game and that's all it is, a fun game.
Maybe one day they will realise this and stop looking for the messiah of gaming, stop worshipping their Fallout 2 cds and start enjoying the things that are here.
They might be surprised that there is alot of fun games out there, some that are even better then Fallout.

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NMA: Is there more to supermutants than meets the eyes or are they just the evil enemy?

Pete Hines: There's definitely a backstory. Actually, people have been discussing this a lot, "what are supermutants doing on the East Coast," while the reason is a pretty good and simple one. We're kind of surprised nobody has figured it out yet.

---

So maybe my theory is true.
Someone on the east coast is copying the dude from Fallout 1.

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Originally Posted by TB666

And having a very pretty and fun game is bad ??:inquisitive:

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I don't get it either.

You can't design the next big thing, if you try you just get Daikatana or (if you are a little more lucky) a Lionhead game. I'm glad they are focussing on making a good game instead of trying to make 'the next big thing'.

It's ironic that people hoping for 'the next big thing' are still worshipping a game made over a decade ago though. Something tells me they don't really want anything revolutionary.

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Originally Posted by doc_bean

Something tells me they don't really want anything revolutionary.

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Thinks so too.
Slap a fallout 3 sticker on a Fallout 2 cd and they will be shouting over the roof-tops and praisng Beth's name.
Seriously, sometimes I wonder if they actually know what they want in the first place.
Kinda like those people afraid to do anything because the universe might implode.

Beth: Ok, let's change this
NMA: No no no no no no no don't touch it, for raptor-jesus's sake don't touch it.
Beth: Why not ??
NMA: I don't know just don't touch it
Beth: Well we gotta do something, can't just leave it like this.
NMA: yes we can
Beth: No we can't, let's atleast remove some of these bugs that makes the game crash every 30 minutes or so.
NMA: no no no no no, it's one of the main pillar of the game's gameplay.
Beth: What, getting booted to windows often ??
NMA: Yes, gives you a chance to admire your desktop wallpaper.
Beth: Ok, let's atleast add auto-save.
NMA: NO !!
Beth: *knocks NMA out*
Beth: Now, let's make us a sequel.

Just copying and pasting something from the Bioshock gameplay thread:

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Originally Posted by Papewaio

I love the iconography in both the city and the game menus... reminds me of Fallout 2... in fact this feels like an FPS version of it.

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On reflection, I agree with Papewaio. Bioshock shows you could make a compelling Fallout style game in first person real time style. Bioshock is also a good example of keeping the essence of a title (from System Shock 2), but modernising it and improving it in some ways (the camera; the mini-map and quest directions; weapon balance).

I'm not sure Bethesda can pull something similar off with Fallout 3, but that's more to do with the content (e.g. I'm not keen on the sound of those mini-nuke explosions) than the game style.

With all due respect, Bioshock has gotten a pretty big bye from the System Shock fans on account of being a spiritual successor, not a direct sequel. If it had been system shock 3, they'd be ripping into the core gameplay mercilessly. It has some steps forward, but also some leaps backward.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Phatose

With all due respect, Bioshock has gotten a pretty big bye from the System Shock fans on account of being a spiritual successor, not a direct sequel.

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Well, as with Fallout, "the fans" are not a monolithic bloc. But as it happens, you are right about one fan at least - I did write off Bioshock at first. The premise just did not sound nearly as engaging as that of System Shock. And I was worried it would be too much of a shooter, not a genuine spiritual successor. However, the info that came out over the last year raised my expectations - e.g. the video of the big daddy/little sisters, arguably the best aspect of the game - and I was pleasantly surprised to see them met by the full game.

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It has some steps forward, but also some leaps backward.

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Indeed. I think it is not as stellar as System Shock 2 (the logs don't grip me as much and the gameplay is not so scarey). But it is much closer to being a successor than I would have imagined prior to first playing it a week ago. If Fallout 3 stands in relation to Fallout 2 as Bioshock does in relation to System Shock 2, I think most reasonable fans would be happy. But I doubt it will (given that FO3 team is new to the series, whereas Bioshock was made by some of the SS2 team).