Fallout 3

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Now that we have a dedicated Fallout forum, lets resume the Fallout 3 discussion/debate.

The release date is already looming over the horizon and there is a new teaser out on gametrailers.com:
HD: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36039.html
SD: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36040.html

Not much to say about this one, nothing new in it. I expect that we will see some more footage during the E3 next week, or something new. At least I hope so.

 

Usually I am very open minded concerning games, but fallout is a bit different. I can't say that I agree with almost any of the choices Bethesda has made for this game and I really think it will not be Fallout 3.

 

The way the gaming industry works these days, making Fallout 3 both commerciable and appealing to true Fallout fans is literally impossible. I for one would be more than happy to get a game that uses the same S.P.E.C.I.A.L. engine that the other two games used, as long as the story and options were just as good as they were "back in the ol' days". However, unless fans with modding skills undertake such a project, it will only exist in my dreams.

Even though Fallout 3 will have possibly the best graphics yet, it won't make up for all the bad things, such as only having 200-300 characters in total in the game, having only a small area to explore, not being isometric and turn based, etc. We and I feel sorry for this.

 

Was your post meant to be sarcastic? Eh - only 200-300? How many characters did you think the original Fallout had? And having only a small area to explore?? This is made by Bethesda - even Oblivion was huge, but these are the people who made the completely bonkers Daggerfall. The size of the game world should be one of the few things nobody is worried by...

What choices? I must admit I know relatively little. From what I could glean:

- SPECIAL is implemented, as are perks and skills
- The game can be played either from a first person or third person perspective
- Combat is real-time except when you make targeted shots
- Dogmeat is in it
- It was banned in Australia for portraying drugs use, so chems are presumably still in.

What else is known? I am largely ambivalent about most of the changes - it could still be either a good game or a bad one, and it will be impossible to judge until I actually play it. The main appeal of Fallout were the choices you made, and how they influenced both the world and the gameplay (and hence had immense replayability). The latter is probably the one I'm most pessimistic about - seeing that in Oblivion and Morrowind, more or less everyone ended up with a very similar character...

 

It may be a good game, but it certainly won't be a good Fallout game and I highly doubt it will be a good RPG (well, it's blatently a FPS/RPG hybrid anyway).

The latest news item on RPG Codex quotes from some XBox magazine that's played the game for a bit. A lot of what he happily faps over should show well enough how this game fails at (a) Falloutness, and (b) RPGness.

 

"Fallout 3 is Oblivion 2."
Heh. Am I the only one that found Oblivion dead boring after the initial googah wears off? There's no real quests aside from FedEx, or "go to this dungeon, kill people", etc. The immense character flexibility only present different ways to kill people. That being said, there is a certain charm to it, and it might be interesting to see it in a PA setting. But why did it have to be Fallout?

Bottom line: I'll still buy it, but not at the original price. And quite possibly I'll like it, but definitely not as a RPG.

 

Indeed, IGN has released a Fallout 3 preview, here.

"In fact, Fallout 3 is very much Oblivion in a post-apocalyptic world. So if you didn't like that game, or the series for that matter, then ignore everything I've said thus far and go read something else. If, however, you spent 200+ hours in Cyrodiil like I did, or just love western-style RPGs, then you should keep going -- because your next big adventure is just over the next hill."

That is a quote from near the beginning of the article, that made me stop reading it for now. I will read it later at some point... *sigh*. And thus the worst fears begin to come true... Oblivion in a post-apocalyptic setting was exactly what I was afraid of. No, Deathmage, you are not alone, Oblivion was dead boring. I am still hoping that it will be good, but it would have to be a lot better than Oblivion, which seems more and more improbable each day.

 

-SPECIAL is purely base upon a turn-based systems which Fallout 3 will not have.
- It has been noted that the third person perspective will not give you the overview needed to enjoy the game in that perspective. Did you ever play morrowind or Oblivion in third person? No because it didn't work.
- Real time wasn't made for the special system, Fallout was about making strategically choices in turn-based. Besides the way Bethesda is describing the VATS system is to aim a few shots in order only so you can see a body explode in slow motion.
- I couldn't care less about dogmeat, it was the least interesting NPC.
- That's just the left wing world we live in today. Countries used to not care about games. Hell, in fallout 1 you could overdose a kid on the street if you wanted to.

It's (sadly) a fact that fallout will be oblivion with guns, which is perfectly fine if you call it oblivion with guns but please do not call it Fallout 3.

Fallout 3 was about dialogue as much as it was about the violence. The dialogue tree we have seen so far is laughable.

 

I came into the series on Fallout Tactics. While I enjoy turn-based play I prefer more real time action, say Pools of Radiance vs Neverwinter Nights. I enjoyed Oblivion, although I never beat it because I love to side quest and I never got back to the main plot before I moved on to something else. I think there's a lot of potential for the FO:3 to either be a great game or to be a crappy one.

You guys are definitely right though. While some people would love the crap out of a more original style FO remake, in today's gaming realm there's not a huge market for that style of gameplay.

As for Australia, it's not the lefties you need to blame, it's the righties. Censorship is their department. Just look at organizations like the MPAA who try to "preserve family values."

 

I've been reading various previews, and most of the people who had a chance to play it seem positive about it. I agree with Mienk though, there is no way to tell if Fallout 3 will be good or bad until we get a chance to play it - the descriptions are often too vague.

Not that you would think so from reading the NMA forums though - they are lambasting the still unreleased game with an almost religious zeal. The amount of bile spilled over even the tiniest bit of information is staggering... I am starting to see why Fallout fanboys have such a reputation.

 

It's not just fallout fans though. I know people who get really attached to a system they love and refuse to move to the next step in the series because they prefer the older systems. Take D&D for example and 3.5 vs the new 4th edition. A lot of D&Ders aren't embracing 4th edition, even though it streamlines game play and adds some cool features it also takes away some of them. A lot of people I know who are Final Fantasy fanboys and have been playing since 1 on the NES prefer the 8-bit games. While cool for some, the newer battle systems changed their game.

Going to a FPSRPG is going to do that to many of the Fallout fans because they're used to a Warhammer style, turn-based hex system. It's a drastic change. I enjoy some FPS games so I'm probably going to enjoy the shift, but honestly I won't enjoy as much has they stuck to a classic style of play with some new age tweaks.

 

Well, Fallout 3 will not somehow invalidate the previous games - they are still there, alive and well and unchanged (mods notwhitstanding). This goes even more for P&P RPG - if you don't like the 4th edition, you can continue playing the old ones, no one is forcing you to switch.

 

Oblivion was smaller than Morrowind and Morrowind was smaller than Daggerfall (which was mostly randomly-generated anyway).

It's safe to assume Fallout 3 will be fairly small, simply due to the way most games are made these days: a huge amount of development time goes into the graphics, the physics engine, the voice acting, character facial expressions, etc. That leaves less time for writing quests, creating areas, and adding deep complexity to the game.

Mass Effect suffered from the same thing. It looks great. It's loaded with hours upon hours of voice acting. The main story line is about 12 hours of gameplay. The side quests are fairly generic filler. It's the future of games, I'm afraid.

 

Yeah, and I think that's the real issue - not small vs large worlds but procedurally generated (i.e. random) vs designed. Most of oblivion was procedural - which is why it just looked like a huge world but only had five locations repeated ad nauseam: Cave, Abandoned Mine, Ayelid Ruin, Fort and Oblivion Gate. The real fun in oblivion was in the scripted places, the cities and to some extent villages. Morrowind, on the other hand had more designed locations, but shallower quests, so it was more fun to just walk (or fly ) around randomly and discover interesting things.

Now, as far as I can tell (although they seem awfully inconsistent in their statements) Bethesda have said that Fallout 3 is not procedural, but designed. If this necessitates a smaller world, then so be it, as long as it's interesting. In any case this is how the original Fallout operated - interested scripted locations (that you can fast-travel to) with nothing much in between (similar to Morrowind), as opposed to Oblivion's hundreds of procedurally generated and boring caves, mines etc.

 

I finally had some time to read through several Fallout 3 previews. At this point I do not really know what to expect from the game, it still feels like Oblivion with guns. But who knows... some thoughts about the previews.

Graphics appear to be overall quite successfull and contribute to the post-apocalyptic feel quite well. One not so successfull thing about the graphics is the overused bloom, which sadly is done more often than not (in many games). Music and sounds should be fine too.

The combat system, VATS and SPECIAL are another thing though. FPS is fine with me, but the skills of the player should be in a bigger role. Apparently they have been fine tuning the system, but it remains to be seen how much the character's skills affect the FPS combat. VATS appears to be a useless, but effective killing addon. A system just glued together for extra bloody effects. SPECIAL, like said before in this thread, was designed as a turn based system, I do not think it will work here. Of course it depends on how heavily it is tweaked or modified. It also remains to be seen how they have managed with the perks.

Dialogue and karma are two other things that has me worried. Little has been said about the dialogue. Some say it is more or less like in Oblivion, but with swear words, perhaps not so promising. According to some reviews the karma system is more forgiving, that is, the action - response chain and reputation is not as final as it should be. Although others say it works great. Lastly, what is this about 500 different endings? Are they counting every small variation that you can have in a traditional Fallout-like ending as a different one? There can hardly be that many real endings.

I am still waiting and hoping for a good Fallout game, but this project has never been exciting, or a must have.

 

Fallout Tactics (the well-received PC version, not the travesty that was released on the PS2 and XBOX) was able to make SPECIAL work just fine in real time. Lionheart was able to pull it off reasonably well, too. To be truthful, I have low expectations for Fallout 3, and am particularly unhappy about the fact that it won't have a turn based mode (Tactics, at least, allowed you to toggle between turn-based and real time whenever you wanted), but I'm not remotely concerned about whether SPECIAL will "work" in real-time. If 14 Degrees East could do it with Fallout: Tactics and Reflexive could do it with Lionheart, I'm sure Bethesda won't break it completely.

 

Dialogue screenshots leaked: http://www.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=44246

They don't look very good to me, but maybe I'm just looking through ****-tinted glasses, and drawing conclusions without much context of the conversation is probably not that great an idea.

 

The game's finally got a release date it seems. According to the official website it's the 28th and the 31st of October for the North American and European releases, respectively.

I don't know what to think of the game yet. On the one hand there's the incredible amount of hatred spilled at it by NMA, RPGcodex and other people who haven't played it yet, refuse to see it and probably never will. On the other hand the game has apparently already won several awards, even though it hasn't been released yet. I'm not going to believe either extreme, so I think I'll wait until a demo is available and see for myself.

 

I don't know. Those screens did not look that bad. I have never played fallout so I cannot tell if they messed it up like many developers do whit fantasy rpg's.

Oblivion was my kind of game, just as Morrowind was. I think I am going to like this one.

 

Yes, if you liked Oblivion and/or Morrowind, you will almost certainly like this one. But for those who did not (like me), it is a bit different...

As for SPECIAL in Fallout Tactics, I played it in the classic turn based mode. Liked it the most. Maybe I should install it again and have a go at all of the three modes. But SPECIAL in real time FPS environment? No thanks.

About the awards, it has won some Best of awards, at least in E3 2007 and 2008, nothing special about those.