Fallout 3 discussion

[econ21]

When in doubt use VLC, it's a great freeware media player that comes packed with codecs and can play just about anything, .mov files included.

Thanks - worked great.

As for the trailer: A+ for keeping true to the Fallout traditions. But I think it tells us absolutely nothing about the gameplay, e.g. whether it is first person view or whatever.

[TinCow]

Also, we do know that it's not real time right? Per Pete Hines, in it's rendered by the engine as a cinematic, not as one would experience in-game.

Nothing I have read indicates real time or turn based at all. You're right about the teaser being rendered in-game as a cinematic and nothing more, so that means nothing, but I haven't seen any info to shed light on that aspect. Personally, I think it would be best to use an Infinity Engine style hybrid, where it's turn based, but runs in real time and you can pause to give commands.

[Whacker]

Personally, I think it would be best to use an Infinity Engine style hybrid, where it's turn based, but runs in real time and you can pause to give commands.

There have been a few good debates about this. My two cents, I wouldn't be opposed to it at all, IF it's done and implemented right. The issue is that it tends to break parts of the SPECIAL combat system, sequence being one of these things off the top of my head.

[TinCow]

The Infinity Engine took sequence into account in a roundabout way by giving weapon speeds, casting times, etc. It wouldn't be that hard to change the SPECIAL sequence perks/traits to shave off some time on the actions in that manner. Not the same as FO1/2, but the end result is largely the same.

I definitely hope they keep the SPECIAL system intact, but I really really want new and revised perks/traits. The FO2 system had so many uber ones and so many totally useless ones that it made the characters pretty bland. I would like to see them balance out the effects a lot more, so that there's not just one or two single character development tracks that dominate them all. Gifted in particular has simply got to go.

[Spino]

Thanks - worked great.

As for the trailer: A+ for keeping true to the Fallout traditions. But I think it tells us absolutely nothing about the gameplay, e.g. whether it is first person view or whatever.

You're welcome!

I think the trailer is great! It totally gets me in a FO state of mind and I loved hearing Ron Perlman's voice at the end. Fall 2008 is such a long time to wait...

I'm hoping FO3 is first person, or in the very least 3rd person with an option for 1st person viewing like KOTOR. I'd hate to have the camera limited to the traditional FO perspective, I want to see ceilings and the sky dammit!

[Whacker]

You're welcome!

I think the trailer is great! It totally gets me in a FO state of mind and I loved hearing Ron Perlman's voice at the end. Fall 2008 is such a long time to wait...

I'm hoping FO3 is first person, or in the very least 3rd person with an option for 1st person viewing like KOTOR. I'd hate to have the camera limited to the traditional FO perspective, I want to see ceilings and the sky dammit!

I challenge thee to a duel. To the death, sir! To the death!

[Lemur]

I'm hoping FO3 is first person, or in the very least 3rd person with an option for 1st person viewing like KOTOR. I'd hate to have the camera limited to the traditional FO perspective, I want to see ceilings and the sky dammit!

As unpopular as this notion is, I kinda agree. I loved the first two Fallouts, but I'm ready for a different play dynamic. Stalker showed me the light.

If I said any such thing over at No Mutants Allowed, I would be hung, drawn and quartered.

[russia almighty]

As long as there is no level scaling I'll be happy. That was oblivions only major problem.

[econ21]

If I said any such thing over at No Mutants Allowed, I would be hung, drawn and quartered.

Don't worry - Whacker will get to you soon enough after he is done with Spino.

Personally, I think lots of styles could work. They emphasise different things. The old Fallout isometric style can make things more tactical (although IMO FO1 and FO2 were never that tactical, unlike say Baldur's Gate 2 which was pretty much a squad level tactics game at one level.) The Stalker style can make things more immersive. Perhaps the KOTOR style is a happy compromise between the two.

But the key things I liked about FO - story, character, quests, freedom to roam a vast world, dialogue and writing, the atmosphere & premise, SPECIAL, the combat vs non-combat options etc - could work with any of these styles. And if these things are fluffed, FO3 won't regardless of the perspective. The teaser gives me hope they won't be fluffed.

[TB666]

I'm hoping FO3 is first person, or in the very least 3rd person with an option for 1st person viewing like KOTOR. I'd hate to have the camera limited to the traditional FO perspective, I want to see ceilings and the sky dammit!

I agree.
After seeing the concept art 1st/3rd person view would be the best.
With the old fallout style view you couldn't really see that much of the world.

[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.

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

[Phatose]

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.

[TinCow]

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

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

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.

[Spino]

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.

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

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

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...

[Orb]

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.

[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
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.

[econ21]

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.

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

[Bob the Insane]

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

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...

[TinCow]

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...

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.)

[Whacker]

http://fallout3.wordpress.com/

*sigh*

[TB666]

http://fallout3.wordpress.com/

If it's true then I'm really interested

[Whacker]

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.

[TB666]

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.

[TinCow]

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

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?

[Whacker]

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?

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.

[TinCow]

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.

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:

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.

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?

[econ21]

http://fallout3.wordpress.com/

*sigh*

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.

[Whacker]

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.

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.

[Whacker]

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?

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.

[TB666]

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.