f13.net

http://pc.ign.com/articles/780/780262p1.html (http://pc.ign.com/articles/780/780262p1.html)

Let the snarky jokes about bugs begin.

Honestly, my only worry is that NPCs in the Elder Scrolls are usually kind of flat. My ultimate wish would be keep the underlying systems the same but update the graphics. It's not Fallout if I don't get to choose bizarre perks and such.

ETA: I Know they were already working on number 3 but now there is hope for 4 and more to come out.

I'm not so much worried about the bugs as the consolization and dumbing-down of their own franchise. I've read interviews with them before, and they keep claiming to be huge Fallout fans that will do justice to the franchise...but I've not seen that from their other products. Bums me out, Bethsoft was one of my favorite devs back in the 90s.

Attitude: Wait and See.

It's going to be dumbed down with compass and a quest pop up telling me to kill 10 rats right after I talk to the starting NPC, so I'm not placing too high expectations from it. Oblivion is a nice big sandbox, but the silly quests and dumb scaling mobs ruined any sense of exploration for me. It took a lot of mods to make it acceptable, and I'm just interested to see if Bethesda gonna give mod freedom on Fallout or not

"Interplay is developing its own Fallout MMO, but under terms of the deal will be acting as licensee rather than owner. A special clause of the agreement states that Interplay must commence full-scale development on the title within 24 months of the date of this agreement or forfeit its rights to the license.

Additionally, Interplay has agreed that it will commercially launch the Fallout MMO within four years of the start of development or again forfeit its rights to the IP. If the game does indeed see the light of day, Interplay has agreed to pay 12% of the game's sales and subscription fees to Bethesda."

Cranking out an MMO under a time crunch to keep the license?  I bet that game is gonna be awesome.

Bethesda is still one of my favorite devs.  They are one of the few dev houses willing to do their own thing.  All the doom and gloom about Oblivion sucking is pretty silly, the game was a wide open single player sandbox of amazing scope and detail.  There really isn't anything else comparable and even though there were some bad decisions made with the design it still followed very well along their core principles from Arena onward.

Oblivion was not the horrible train wreck of stupendous proportions people here are making it out to be.  Mostly it's problem is missed potential not pure unadulterated suckiness.

Um? They've "had" Fallout for at least two years now...

Oh, I see - they bought the whole IP, instead of just licensing it. Doesn't really change much, though.

I can't remember the last Bethesda product I liked. I'm not holding out hope for their Fallout game.


Also, poor Interplay...who could possibly want to put their ass on the line to pound out a MMO under such a tight deadline?

I keep having to reply to this stuff. The consolization boils down to menu systems. That's it. The so-called dumbing-down was by player request. Players complained loudly on the forums that Morrowind was too sandboxy and that quests had bad directions and so finding the people you wanted was hard. They also complained about travel times. So, Oblivion gave people quest pointers and instant-travel options. So, don't blame Bethesda, blame your fellow gamers. It's the same movement that led from EQ to WOW in MMOs and honestly, I'm surprised that on a site where people don't want cockblocks in MMOs they do want them in their singleplayer games. Because that's what Oblivion was, Morrowind without the cockblocks.

I agree. I guess I missed where someone said it was a horrible train wreck of stupendous proportions.  I just liked the first two elder scrolls games better than the last two. They are simplistic but pretty.

Morrowind removed the instatravel from the older games, btw. It also removed the massive dungeons that were my favorite part of the series, and that's really my main gripe. You won't find me saying Morrowind was a great game, I thought it sucked, too. I'm a Daggerfall and Arena guy. Of course I blame my fellow gamers, to make money one must cater to the LCDtards.

I also disagree there's no competition. The Gothic series is great and there have been a few good isometrics like Divine Divinity or Sacred.

IMO the Gothic series is ok but it's much smaller in scope than the Elder Scrolls. It also feels more limited in character creation and what you can do.

Divine Divinity and Sacred are more Diabloish and so I don't consider them direct competition.

I miss the bigger dungeons too btw.

The thing is that 90% of Oblivion's problems can be solved by mods. Did they ever release the model importer so people could make their own models/weapons/buildings/etc without hacks?

It's not just the dungeons that bug me, it's the whole direction of the game.  You've still got the glitchy code, the boring gameplay mechanics, the stupid levelling system, the fairly blah graphics that won't run on anything with specs lower than Cerebro, and so on.  I loved Daggerfall, and I'd love to see them do "Daggerfall, only better" but instead, they seem focused on "Daggerfall, only smaller and with shinier graphics."

Sigh... Fondmemoryitis strikes again.

Yes Daggerfall was cool - it was also the most buggy POS game ever released. It was full of randomly generated content that made no logical sense at all. It had a leveling system that a three year old could exploit, and had fast travel because basically the space between towns was one gigantic wasteland. Don't get me wrong, I loved it in its day, but Daggerfall done now would be an abyssmal failure.


Some of the dungeons in Oblivion take more than an hour to grind through, they are huge enough to have to be seperated in to four or more zones.

Stupid leveling? It's Daggerfall's, but less exploitable. I understand the dislike of the scaled encounters, but I understand why they did them as well (avg gamers don't like encounters they can't win). It was easy enough to mod out.

Blah Graphics? Good lord. Complain about the facegen faces if you like, but really, it has some of the richest looking environmental graphics around. If you are a graphics whore - there are 400MB texture packs available to improve it even more.

Performance - I run it with custome textures on a 7900GT at 1680 x 1050,  high settings and AA on, and it runs just fine for me thanks.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not the Oblivion super fanboi - it has plenty of issues - it just bugs me with some of the nitpicky or downright wrong things that people like to say about it. Would I like to see some major improvements? Hell yea:

 - the NPCs still lack character
 - the face gen faces are hideous
 - its really annoying that they added voiceover, but only used 5 actors for 5000 npcs.
 - they should have done a better job on the scaling in the first place
 - the animations really should have been better - we are at a stage where a model should go through more than one frame of animation when it jumps

I really do think its biggest fault is that the NPCs don't bring you in to the story well enough. They improved that over Morrowind, but they have a ways to go. They need to be looking at Bioware for ideas on that front - companions or party members with actual backgrounds and stories would be a good start.


I don't know how offical it was, but there are tons of new models in mods now - replacement bodys, new weapons, new placebles, etc.

Only in interface and somewhat in combat. They are worlds ahead of Diablo in rpg-ness. Both feature large open worlds with tons of side quests and interactivity. Diablo was just a popular isometric hack-n-slash dungeon crawl (I'm well on the record as not liking Diablo much).

Bunk. It's not fondmemoryitis. I remember the bugs. It was one of those games that rose above the bugs, like Vampire Bloodlines (or the quirky interface of Gothics). I loved the randomly generated content. I don't exploit game systems, so I don't count that as a negative. I should note I've played Daggerfall as recently as a couple years ago when I was in a nostalgia mode (and X-Com and all kinds of Great Old Ones).

The problems you list with Oblivion, I consider minor. The bigger problems can be modded out? That's a broken game that the players fixed. That's worse than KotOR2, which just had the endings rushed and some deleted content, at least the core game was solid. Maybe if they collected the best 'fixes' and released it as an official downloadable pack, but I'm not going to waste my time sifting through third party shit trying to fix something I paid good dough for. I'll go play something that's good to go out of the box.

Well, to be fair, the only big problem that "needed" to be modded out was the scaled encounters. Whether or not scaled encounters was a good idea or not is an argument on the level of Felucia/Trammel, or whatever the fuck they were called.

Oblivion really was bittersweet for me, much like Morrowind. I loved the shit out of it for about 30 - 40 hours worth of play, and then hit a wall - started to see the issues with it, and got bored. Modding brought me back a few times, but I know its a game I will probably never actually finish the main quest on.

My point being, it was far from perfect, but I did get enough enjoyment out of it to make me still want to see what Beth offers up next.


Oh, and Gothic - I bought Gothic 3 recently since it was cheap and well recomended here. If anyone can tell me how to run it without CTDs every five minutes it might actually be interesting... Appears the only patches are for the German version.

Played Morrowind much longer than Oblivion.  With every release of the same game but with more shiny, the time for me to say 'Wait, I've played this' becomes ever shorter.


I played THE FUCK out of Arena and Daggerfall.  The enchanting system was what made it for me.  And the horse.  I loved my horse.  In Oblivion I just tested how far we could fall before it died.

:)

I was never a big fan of anything Bethesda, but I did end up buying the PS3 Oblivion port recently. I'm not playing it a lot, but it's better than what I expected to be (runs pretty good too).

I've warmed up to it mainly because playing a stealther/thief plays very similarly to playing Garrett in Thief. Stealth is fun in this game. Later on, I found out that Bethesda hired a guy from the Thief team, so I guess it's no coincidence (Emil Pagliarulo, from T2 and 3 --- Who is also, supposedly, the lead for Fallout 3).

The evil brotherhood of evil was awesome in Oblivion.

IIRC People complained about those huge dungeons you loved so much too. So Morrowind's dungeons were again a reaction to what the percieved the market wanted. I thought the Oblivion dungeons improved on Morrowind's a bit. I'd like bigger as well but not the cut and paste massive messes that were in Daggerfall either.

The only fun thing I found about Arena dungeons was the disappear wall spell I used to cut out a lot of the pointless travel. Shame they kept dropped that spell in later games.

Thing is, the rest of the game is typical Bethesda stuff, which I've never really cared for.

Parts of it serve OK as a poor man's Thief though. Or rather, an open ended, less scripted, RPG oriented one. Or something like that.

Shit, I don't know.

Basically, that Thief guy was apparently responsible for all of that Dark Brotherhood stuff, the Arena stuff, and the stealth and security gameplay. Which is basically the good parts of the game. The rest is still crap.

Thief + Dark Brotherhood are the only reasons I lasted as long as I did in that game.

The steep development bar set is at least somewhat reassuring for a project that inspires little itself.

I think what you're talking about is just a reaction to how hyped the game was. I too felt it wasn't too much fun for me, but reckognized how it could really be fun to other people. Than I read a couple of reviews, both press and fan, and went "wth? this game JUST ISN'T THAT GOOD", so I had to compensate by saying it's an overhyped piece of shit :P

Changing your game sequels based on comments from people that did not like your game is bad.  They are not going to like your please-everyone design as much as the original fans liked the previous design.  Please refer to Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, and probably many others I can't remember.

The actual stealth gameplay was very similar in Morrowind iirc, with backstabs from stealth doing huge damage, etc. Only thing he added to that was the lockpicking minigame really. And the Dark Brotherhood quests, they were really good too.

Edit: Fixed busted quote.

Wow, your quotes are way fucked.  I don't think I said that.

Me too!

Nope - you were not drunk.... Or you were and you remembered...

I liked Oblivion. It gave me a lot of fun. I can think of a lot worse places that the Fallout license could have gone.

Heres hoping they make a decent game with it.

Unfortunately, this is Fallout we're talking about. And I can think of better studios than Bethesda. :(

From Penny Arcade.

Fallout may be an old license but there is still a lot of interest in it.

A LOT OF INTEREST IN FALLOUT?

GEE. WHO'D HAVE THOUGHT?

WHY WERE PEOPLE INTERESTED IN DEUS EX 2?

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF OBSIDIAN BOUGHT THE PLANESCAPE LICENSE.

MYSTERIES THAT WILL ONLY UNRAVEL THEMSELVES ONCE COMIC WRITERS AND JOURNALISTS BEGIN TO INVESTIGATE.

Really though, Tycho is a fucking dook.

I would cry is Obsidian got the PS license.

Well, we would have the first half of a good PS game then. Maybe we could trick Obsidian into planning a double length game so that they deliver a complete game for once!

See, you blame Obsidian for that.

I blame the Star Wars license.

I sure hope you are right, I would even pray for that if I was religious and they got one of the licenses I cared about.

Bioware did fine with KotOR. Obsidian couldn't even finish it. And by all accounts, NWN2 kinda sucks as well.

At this point, I have very little faith in their ability to deliver a complete game that isn't ass.

That's Nutso, of course.

Sure, but so is liking Star Wars post Episode 1.

It's Me.  You don't have to preach to the Choir.

However, Star Wars aside, Obsidian haven't yet done a decent or even complete game.

They are not worthy of your cash, no matter what.


Hell, I just gave up on NWN2, so substandard was the product.  I'm still enjoying the original.

NWN2 is truly awful, I agree. Granted, I don't like NWN either, but still, at least it works.

Well, I'd prefer Troika get Planescape, but that's even less likely.

Didn't Troika die?
Miserably?

Vampires ate them.


Then spewed them out to Obsidian (for reals).

If Bloodlines was any indication, it's probably for the best that they cannot get the Fallout license.

Dead serious, I'd prefer a half-finished, buggy Troika-made Planescape or Fallout to what Bethsoft will inevitably do (OH GREAT, FUTUREPUNK SANDBOX, YAY HOW MUCH FUN, WAIT, WHERE'S THE NARRATIVE?)

Either way, Fallout is going to turn into some kind of first-person...thing. I was perfectly happy with an isometric turn-based game.

Sandboxes are a cool idea to me, but I like narratives too. And narratives can be possible/easily accessible in a sandbox. Bethesda just hasn't learned enough from Rockstar in that respect.

That being said, Fallout isn't a bad license for a sandbox. I mean, I'm sure that's what it'd be exactly like if Fallout was a real life scenario. Just pointlessly wandering around in a daze, looking for trash.

Can I just reiterate how much I fucking love Fallout.

Must dig out the disks for my laptop.

What?  Bloodlines is one of my favorite games!  :|

For reals, Bloodline was a revelation. It was, by far, the best vampire game ever (and Vampire), but more than that, it was simply a masterpiece. Unfortunately, it was the worst example of Buggy known to gaming.

The execution of Bloodlines kinda fucked it up.

Further, most of the freedom of choice turned out not to be.

Masquerade was, in fact, fucking awesome, of course.  Nothing like owning Riot cops with the sword that SWALLOWS THEIR SOULS.

I never finished Arcanum or Bloodlines. Probably the best games I've played, that at the same time, couldn't totally win me over because of their performance.

I should try revisiting them someday though.

Which of the Vampire games is the good one?

Both Bloodlines and Redemption were great games, Bloodlines being the better. I never got far enough in Arcanum but it seemed like a really good game. I want to save a bunch of old pcs and my old titles and when I retire I'm going to spend my retirement playing old video games all day.

I just started playing Planescape again on my p3 laptop, but I'll probably stop (again) when the new gpu comes in, in a couple days.

Troika games are far too buggy for my taste. Also, I don't think Troika did a very good job taking advantage of Source; Quite a few parts of the game look like shit to me.

The troika guys were/are genious. I give them that. They had trouble making games that work, though. I still think Arcanum is one of the best games ever :)

The Fallout series was golden. I am wary of Bethesda's execution of it. Bugs galore is annoying as all hell.  Just hope they have the spirit of the older games. Hell I still play em from time to time.

That being said if they cock it up as bad as Atari did to NWN2 I'll go on a baby punching rampage.

Signe's avatar first please.

I tried playing Arcanum semi-recently, but I just couldn't get into it.

I tried going through the game once, but failed. Apparently, hybrids suck balls in that game; you either go full-on magic or tech. Anything less means you can't use the more powerful gear, and you resists suck.

As I recall, full-on tech sucked, too (which was annoying, because that was kind of what made the game seem interesting to me).  All the high-end tech gear required components which were extremely limited in quanitity (like, only one or two exist in the game, off on some obscure shore somewhere, hope you didn't sell it), and guns and explosives were the worst weapons in the game (a bow and arrow was FAR faster than a pistol) while at the same time being ludicrously expensive to operate.  But mages could get a simple Harm spell to start with that could knock out half the enemies in the game if you got your magic affinity high enough.

Troika was never great with balance.

EDIT: It's a shame, because a lot of the guys at that studio had a lot of good ideas, but sucked with implementation. It's probably for the better that the staff has been scattered to the winds, to work at studios where they Might be working alongside people who know how to get a functioning game out the door.

I wouldn't say tech sucked. I'd say it was more challenging than magic. The one time I beat that game I did it with a tech guy. The cool thing was I got to a point where magic didn't affect me and my tech was better than most other people's. In fact, I have vague memories of the final boss fight being pretty easy.

Arcanum was sort of like Fallout-lite to me. It had elements that resembled Fallout but lacked that "one thing" that made Fallout so cool. I just am not 100% sure what that one thing was. The best word I can think of is personality.

Worf.  It lacked Worf.

I guess i just never had many problems with Bloodlines since I only just played it a few months ago.  There were a buttload of patches available that, once applies, resulted in very few problems.

Only in Fallout 2 did you get this :

brings a fucking tear to my eye.
We'll never see a game like Fallout or Fallout 2. Or like Starcraft for that matter :)

edit: Damn you IW. Now I have to install Fallout 2 tonight. There go another 2 months of playing a game I've played prolly more than 1000 hours...

You'll need this.... (http://user.tninet.se/~jyg699a/fallout2.html)

I'll settle for any game where you can cut a person in half, with a chaingun.  Hell the overall lack of post-apoc settings in PC games is disgusting.

I've never played a Fallout game  :cry:

Or, if you planned right, cut them in half with a vicious punch to the chest.  Slayer perk rules!

If you also have not played Planescape:Torment you are hereby exiled to the land of Woe, where all you get are EA sport title rehashes and buggy FPS's with 10 minutes of gameplay.

Then you just haven't fucking lived.

Get Fallout 2 now.  It's not dated (really) and it will provide hours and hours and literally hours of endless 'proper' RPG amusement.

Fallout 1 is better.  :nda:

So I don't get killed maybe I should say I liked one better,  it was easier to get into because real weapons were more common early on and you didn't have to use a fucking stick to kill shit. The first 10% of Fallout2 really turned me off. After that it was all great but I put it on hold several times before I finally really got into it.

Well, you can balance that against the increased depth and range that 2 had and make up your own mind.

I'm with 2.

Just to be clear IMO you should play them both, in order

AS for Falout3. I'm looking forward to playing it quite a bit. I think Ovlblivion was good with the exception of 2 major things. 1 Combat was meh, 2 I never gave a fuck about anyone or anything in it. It had little personality, and the lore was  IMO uninteresting. Fallout had interesting people and places, and it was fun. So heres hoping they make a worthy sequil.  But seeing as it probably wont be out for 2 years + I'm not holding my breath or anything.

If Fallout 3 can, on release, be described in any way or even in the same sentence as, Oblivion, it'll suck goat.

Unless that sentence is "Fallout 3 from the makers of Oblivion and completely different from said pile of cack is realeased...."

*whew* Just barely dodged the land of Woe...

Currently trying to track down a copy of Fallout 1 AND 2.

Well, you can cut someone in half with a shotgun in FEAR. I was running gpu tests on the new card last night and blasted a guy in half. Girlfriend was watching and I got a satisfying "Oh, gawd.." of disgust from her general direction. Pumped blood for a few seconds, too. I wish body parts didn't vanish, maybe there's an ini setting I could tweak it out.

Still, as fun as FEAR combat is, the utter lack of rpg elements or really much in the way of anything beyond shooting things gets old fast. Having started Planescape when the good PC was down, everything kinda pales.

If they hit the ranged combat right like Stalker, then there might be hope.

Well, this thread convinced me to drag out my Fallout 1&2 CDs to see if they play in XP. I'm not hopeful about Fallout 1 but we'll see.

Since this thread I've been hunting like hell for my F2 CD, which I saw only a week before.

But I can't find the fucking thing.  I fear I'll find it in one of Elena's Nappies shortly.

However, if I get it running, I'm totally keeping this thread alive by posting my character build and any interesting happenings.

(After reading the walk-through I posted, I finally figured out why the fuck I couldn't complete the child-ghost quest.  Apparently, the UK version removed the children to stop us shooting them in the crotch and waiting until they bled out.  For The Children, or something.)

I'm somewhat sure that Fallout will actually run in XP.

I'm playing fallout 1 in XP at the moment.

The game is a little simpler than I remember.

Still awesome.  Having 10 luck is just plain hax though.

Sniping FTW...

Except for the final area...those fuckers were impossible to 1-shot with the sniper rifle.

yeah, I abused the hell out of the crit system. I remember that. That, and having so much strength the sledgehammer knocked people clear across the map.

If I play through again, I might go with energy weapons =)

I can't find my Fallout 1 CD any more.. guess I'll have to pick up a fresh copy. Fortunately I found my F2 CD this weekend while cleaning out some old boxes. :)

Don't.

But But But, WHY?

Last time I went through I used the top-end sniper rifle to 1-shot Deathclaws. I don't like melee, so What does that leave me with?

If memory serves Energy weapons are incredibly rare and so taking that skill is basically a waste.

I'm glad to hear FO1 runs on XP. I've heard rumors that new computers run too fast and so things like the random encounters on the world map don't work right, as in you rarely if ever have any. Anyone know if it's true? I'll probably post my build too. I usually choose the same two perks, the one that gives a +10 to stats but a minus to skills and the one that makes your enemies explode bloodily when you kill them but has no real gameplay effect.

Interesting.  I've only had 2 random encounters so far, and each of them based on having 10 luck score.  I wonder if the real random encounters are indeed not working correctly.  Very possible, and unfortunate.  I figured it was just a statistical anomaly. 

IIRC Energy Weapons are good in the end-game, but you really need small arms to carry you through the first half.

From what I recall the problem with energy weapons was that you can't get one until way late in the game.  So what ends up happening is that you have to split your skill points between energy weapons and some other 'temporary' ability.  I also think I recall that foes in combat armor were very hard to kill with energy weapons.

I did a quick shot specialist once.  That was pretty fun.  Nice to be able to shot two or three people and move before anyone else even blinks.

It's true. World encounters still work... you just fly around the world map so fast you don't leave the RNG much time to give you one. :P There's a fix out there somewhere, can't remember where though.

As for characters I always like:

Fast Shot (1 less AP for shooting, no targetted shots)
Gifted (+1 all stats, less skills)

Small Guns
Lockpicking
Speech

Then for stats I choose whatever will give me 10 of perc, luck, agi, and int by the end of the game. Why yes, I *am* a munchkin. :P Fast Shot is le awesome. Once you get sniper with 10 luck you wont need targeted shots for higher crit rates, and with better criticals you have about the same chance of extra damage or instant death with normal shots. Once you get 12 ap and the gauss pistol with fast shot and rapid fire you shoot 6 times in one round and are able to cut down entire squads of badguys before they get a chance to shoot back.

On the subject of energy weapons, lasers are pointless because anyone in metal armor or higher has huge resistance too it (plus mutants in the first game...). Plasma is alright, and the best weapon you can get in the first game, but you always get them late. In the first game my strat is always to tag small guns and then by the time I have plasma I have plenty of spare points to throw into energy weapons. In the second game you can get pulse pistol/rifle which are about as good as gauss, but they often disintegrate bodies (plasma also does the same from melting) leaving the loot on the ground making it hard to pick up, so I often dont bother and just stick with small guns in F2.

So I never played Fallout either, and only played through maybe half of PS:Torment (oh so good).

Tried to reload PS:T last year and couldn't get over the gfx, I'm such a dirty whore.

If I get Fallout, will I have the same problem?

Very likley.  Fallout 2 might have higher resolution options since it's not infinity engine game (offhand I don't know though), but it won't be pretty by today's standards.

Torment is still gorgeous by today's standards.

Fallout 1 & 2 were never really that great looking. Ya know, browns.

Post apocolyptic is always loads of brown (or grey).  Auto Assault nailed that!

It adds something to Fallout's setting.  In Auto Assault it just felt lazy.

Edit: Maybe it's time for another Fallout play through.  Not sure if I still have my Fallout 1 disks. I know I have the disks for 2.  Other games are going to get angry with me.

Loaded up Fallout 2. Couldn't find my Fallout 1 disks.  /cry

Noticed something I never had before.  When I first arrived at the Den, I talk to Rebecca and she gives me 1k cash, an uzi and metal armor. Said that my boyfriend was gave them to me and he was going to go be a commando or something (female char).  Does this happen in every game and I just haven't played in long enough to remember or was this a "lol chix get free stuff" moment?

Making a combination quick shot, gifted small arms/martial arts/speech person.  Your basic fast talking, run-and-gun super hero.  Fun so far, but I pretty much always play a Fallout game with some variant on this combo (usually more of a sniper).

edit: Hah.  Just looked on Gamefaqs.  You get the free stuff if you name your character "Buffy".  I love this game.

Which leads us to the conclusion that you named your character Buffy.  You're a sick man.

I think there's other stuff that you get for Buffy as well, isn't there ?

On that note, any suggestions for patches? I know there are official ones, but I'm seeing a lot of fan made ones to fix bugs that were still left over after the fact.

This thread made me start playing Fallout Tactics again. I love me some action-point, turn-based combat.

Too bad my guys can't hit the broad side of a barn.

Found the fix (http://www.gamespot.com/pages/gamespace/download.php?pid=63576&sid=6112803&mode=) for the lack of encounters. Unfortunately it's at gamespot

http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/dload.php?action=category&cat_id=16

I got mine from one of those, again I can't remember exactly which it is, but if you look there you'll find it.

Finally got around to installing.

Humungous Install :  675Mb.

Lol.

And whatnot.

I loaded it up too. Gifted Finesse sniper w/ barter and speech and stats to get to 10 by the end. Pretty much what I played with before, but this is gonna be fun!

Just installed Fallout 2 again.

Won't run full screen. Schild angry.

What? Runs fine on XP for me. You did patch (http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/dload.php?action=file&file_id=704&sid=561e2bc124e73b510ba1aa8d7d14aac7) right?

I am annoyed; You can get by w/ small arms once you hit the first town, you just have to get through the stupid training mission with stab runaway stab runaway stab runaway, but the damn one shot rifle requires strength 5 to use properly and I've only got 4. Grr.

Still not full screen after doing that patch but I am at 1.2.

Could be your resolution.  Remember it's teeny-tiny land in the year of the future.

well yea

but shouldn't the game force 800x600 or wtfever

This game is not Widescreen friendly. There should be apps to force this shit to play nice with directx.

Nab a pistol from the rat cave in Klamath. I hear ya though, I did that once, never again will I go below 5 str. :P

It's your computer schild; It's got to be. It worked just fine, the first time, on my system. I run @ 1920x1200, Dell 2405FPW, directx 9.0c, nvidia 6800GT w/ nv4_disp.dll driver version 6.14.

Fuck it, I'm restarting the game w/ strength 5.

Fully patched up, plus the encounter fix.

Runs fine in full screen. Must be you, Schild.  :|

Has to be you, Schild. We all know your computer is complete shit. Runs fine on my widescreen monitor at 1440x900.

Another note for retrogamers: Planescape has a bunch of user-patches that fix a ton of stuff, too.

I was actually going to do Planescape next after FO1&2. Odd. Thanks to your post i went out and found fixpacks by a guy named Platter.

I was going to make another thread for this but ill stick it here instead:

What could have been (http://www.joystiq.com/2007/05/01/todays-most-if-it-happened-video-fallout-3-footage/)

Oh, you fucking bastard.

What Ironwood said.

Quote on NMA:

:cry:

Oh for fuck's sakes.  Put the option for turn based combat back in and that is pure gold.  Someone needs to die. 

Someone needs to read. Dev commented on the video and said there was an option for turn based or real time.

OH YOU FUCKING BASTARDS.

Bethesda will never be able to make a game that good. They'll try really really hard. But ultimately fail.

Ugh.

Recipe for a good Fallout game:

M-rated humor,dialogue and gore. People must be blown into chunks regularly during the game.
Turn based
Perks and traits
Bizarre quests - I'll take pimp my wife for $100 Alex.

If Fallout 3 is T then I'm automatically not going to buy it. That'll be my biggest warning sign.

I'd think your biggest warning sign should be the Bethesda Softworks logo.

I'm not as cynical about them as you are. I usually enjoy their games but I do have worries that they can't make the NPCs and dialogue work in a Fallout game.

Bethesda will make an awesome Fallout 3.  I guarantee they only bought it because they are huge fans of the series and will treat it with the honor and reverence and it deserves.  We should count ourselves lucky that a quality company which won't go bankrupt anytime soon bought up the license.

You will however need to buy an entirely new computer to run it, and I wouldn't bother playing it until the first patch comes out.

If it's rated T, it will suck. If it's a FPRPG, it will suck. If it has mob scaling, it will suck.


Really, if it's anything like TES, it will suck. Not necessarily because I don't like TES, but because Fallout is NOT TES.

why did you have to link that. Why.

The actual demo is up for download - http://3ddownloads.com/nma-fallout/fo3/misc/Demo.rar#

edit: I can confirm it is playable. Buggy as hell, save doesn't work, you have to create your char every time. But it is playable. Only download if you want to be filled with nerdrage :(

A day after the Van Buren video, Betheshda announce a teaser trailer for Fallout 3 in 34 days. Here's the link - http://fallout.bethsoft.com/ . How can they put that "epic" music there and still claim they get it? I mean, come on.

No Louis Armstrong or other acceptable old timey song.  They fail. 

I have no confidence in these bastards to make a Fallout game. Have they even confirmed yet that they're going to use the SPECIAL system? NERDRAGE++  Is there a FAQ somewhere I can get angry at?

I fear they might forget to give Fallout 3 the retro feel the other 2 had and go for plain scifi. And forget the weird humor. I hope I'm wrong.

A craggy real/brown landscape vista with a few dilapidated buildings, pounding LOTR music, "trailer in 34 days".

They don't get it. They don't get it at all.

... sigh.

When I first saw the title, knowing beforehand that Bethesda had started working on the game awhile back, I was hoping they'd released some info or something that showed they 'got' the setting and everything, and the game would actually be good.  Having read the thread, and seen their teaser page....

I hate being disappointed. 

Wonder if Jeremy Soule is going to do the music.

It won't be Fallout-ish, but at least it'll be good for what it is.

I almost thought that teaser page was good up until I realized it was my winamp playing the dark trancy music and not the site itself. Boo.

The music on the teaser site is definitely Soule.

If the teaser has Ron Pearlman doing his "War.  War never changes" bit, I'll be on board til more gameplay mechanics come out.  I'm perfectly willing to enjoy the game on its own terms while wishing they had called it something other than Fallout.  I'm gonna hold out hope (for 34 more days, apparently) that they know that they didn't have to buy the Fallout license to build a FPS/RPG hybrid set in a post-apocolyptic desert.  It just makes no sense.

Yeah, they could have got Wasteland much cheaper...

That song on the fallout 3 site is crap. But that's neither here nor there. If that building on the left is a convenience store, it's entirely possible that they very well MIGHT "get" it...

Personally, I'd have done a close up of space ice cream or something else entirely micro. The stuff Black Isle really paid attention to were the little things, in both Fallout and Planescape, and I think that's what made the difference. It's what put those games above and beyond the Bladur's Gate and Icewind Dale stuff. Oblivion ignored the little things. I fear Falluot 3 might also.

And if you're wondering what I meant by small, the coincidental dialogue, the item descriptions in stores (especially the curiosity shoppe), the way Morte would read the Nameless One's tattos, etc. These made the game a masterpiece.

Bethsoft doesn't know how to do shit like that.

Fallout 3 is going to be more soul crushing than MOO 3 was.

Then play THIS!!!!!! (http://www.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=35970) And by this I mean the real fallout 3.

Unfortunately I don't think you are. Just the 'vibe' I get off the trailer teaser is totally wrong. We'll see.

thanks
pen

Just wondering where BG2 falls in that 2-camp assessment.

I like BethSoft as well, insofar as I like The Elder Scrolls.  There are two points that stick out to me.  One, I am not aware of a good game they have made that is not a TES game, and B, they have not even been getting TES right lately.  Did any of you play Daggerfall?  If so, do you not cry a little when you play Morrowind and Oblivion?

I would like to believe that Fallout 3 will, in fact, be Fallout Number Three, but it's probably going to be The Elder Scrolls: Somebody Set Us Up The Bomb.

The first games I bought when I got out of college and had enough money for a pc were Daggerfall and Fallout, just off the box art.  Lucky me.  I loved Daggerfall so much I continued playing it even though it crashed my machine every 15 minutes.  I think I spent more time saving my game than actually playing it.

I don't miss that.

Gaaaah. I just related my MoH-rage in another thread from exactly this bone-headed kind of AI. How much cooler would it have been if the brit had yelled "Outta my way yank, I want to shred some nazi!"?

Bah.

Fallout 3: Why are the hobos in power armor? Seriously, if they can't put a scratchy old jazz tune on the trailer, they've missed the boat.

More importantly, why is Obsidian so crappy? They seem to do well and then fall short with both KotOR2 and NWN2. What could they do with a NEW post-apoc IP and without publisher pressures? That's what I wanna know.

You sort of answered your own question; KotOR2 and NWN2 are the only games they have released so far.

Surely, they have talent...they just have a critical problem with Finishing What They Start. Also, I hear NWN2 was not very good.

How they fuck up the music so badly there is beyond me.  It's really not hard.  Fallout is great because of, at least partially, its minimalism.  Just some wind blowing in the background would have been far superior to what they have there.

Just in case you live under rock and missed it. Fallout 3 demo (http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=35970)... well sort-of.

I'm tempted to try it, but I really don't want to torture myself with a "What-if" demo.

I can't imagine Bethesda releasing a product buggier and more unfinished than Troika would have.  And I'm a huge fan of Bloodlines and Arcanum, but they just fall apart at the end.

And Oblivion wasn't awful, but not all that great either.  I'm not too bent out of shape about it.  I didn't care much for Morrowind but got more playtime out of it.  Course I really loved Daggerfall, despite all the bugs.  I liked the random dungeons and guild quests, I felt the game lost something when it got rid of that.  Played the game for months and I never even started the main quest line.  And yes it had a game system that could be very easily exploited.  And quite often I did exploit it terribly (yay for superman vampire/lycanthrope characters).

Hey now, Bloodlines is flat out awesome, and doesn't fall apart at all, ever.

Of course, I waited for a few patches to play the game, so I might be biased.

And, based on bloodlines, I'd definitely pick troika for fallout over bethesda (although I do think Oblivion is cool in some respects)

The mere mention of MOO3 makes me cry.

You could give a high elf a critical weakness to paralysis on creation but they would still remain immune to it.  That sort of thing is why I like Morrowind and Oblivion less than Daggerfall.

it's the same ol story again.
Liam Neeson's gonna voice Fallout3.

ANd I bet we can't kill him in game.
And here's how it's gonna be.
Liam's gonna have 30-40 unique lines in game.

Then Beth will hire 10 actor . 5male 5 female from 5 racial grp:
Chinese / hispanic / African / white american / russian

and give them 50 generic same lines to spam.

'hi'
'what's up'
'the brotherhood of steel is hiring again'
'i saw a deathclaw on the way to the hooker's den'
'what's the news from washington DC'
'get out of here'
'good day'

And at least two of those 5 actors will have voices reminiscent of fingernails on chalkboards.

At least half the characters will be voiced by more than one actor. That bugged me, you'd be talking to a guy for a few minutes and suddenly the entire timbre, accent, volume, everything about his voice would change for a few lines. Heckuvajob.

new art on the main page - http://fallout.bethsoft.com/.

It is the white house.

Apparently the Bethboys haven't registered the webscreams of pain at hearing their music choice yet.

Wake up!  Fallout is NOT EPIC!  IT'S QUIRKY!!!!

Or, in business-speak:  Your inappropriate music selection could result in a loss of sales.

Does it register yet?

I'm not sure the Whitehouse would be left that intact after a Nuclear War.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.

Looks a little too staged.  I think they could have achieved the same visual effect without it being so...minimally damaged.

Pretty sure it would be a big fucking target.

That's not the White House, it's Congress.  If we can't even get the targets right what chances do we have of destroying them?  Come on people!

OK, I'll rephrase :  I don't think Washington would be left that intact in event of a Nuclear War.


I guess we'll find out soon.

(http://www.paulmcelligott.com/images/sw_4x3.jpg)
I've got a baad feeling about this...

To be pedantic, it's the Capitol Building, which houses Congress, with the Washington Mall in the background. I haven't been to DC in years, but I'm fairly sure they're improperly positioned if the long open space behind the Capitol is supposed to be the Reflecting Pool.

Lots of nukes won't reposition things?

It wasn't enough to reposition the buildings structure...

Maybe the anti-ballistic missile shield actually worked?

Maybe the fallout and subsequent years of hiding and breeding have caused, uh, memory relocation?

Scotland planning a sneak attack is it?  I guess now we know what they have been hiding under their kilts all these years...

Just for you. (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=washington+dc&ie=UTF8&t=h&om=1&ll=38.888327,-77.01622&spn=0.011775,0.020084&z=16)

Also, the "Long open space"-type pool you are thinking of is between the Lincoln and Washington Monuments. There is a reflecting pool directly west of the Capitol building, but it's not especially long. It can be hard to pick out the pools without the overlay if you're not familiar with the layout of the area, as the water isn't exactly pristine.

Point being - the picture on the F3 site is accurate. And actually, I wouldn't be surprised if they sourced an original photo and just....photoshopped it.

Yup. That open space just reminded me of the Lincoln/Washington Reflecting Pool, but apparently it's just open space consisting of the National Mall.

I stand corrected.

What's down there would hurt you worse than any nuke could, bitch.

:)

DEADLY UNDERPANTS!!

If it's that painful you should really learn to wipe better.  Just follow the guidelines set by Ace Rimmer.  One up, one down and one to polish...

So. What, Scotland doesn't have laundry soap for undies then? I think the Geneva Convention categorizes that as a Weapon of Massive Disgust. Please report to the nearest internment center for 'processing'. They are also known as 'laundromats'.

There's another picture up.

(http://img384.imageshack.us/img384/5118/carriermyq6.jpg)

I'm just going to pretend for my own sanity that this franchise died years ago.

I don't get it, were they neutron bombs?

Noone does man. Noone does.

I'm playing the Oblivion expansion right now and my former confidence that Fallout 3 will be good is waning...  That said I still stand by my assertion that of all the game companies out there we're lucky Bethesda picked up the license, it could have been much, much worse.  It won't be as good as the original games but it should be enjoyable.

Can anyone recognize the area from that picture?  I'm wondering if they modeled it after a real life picture like they did last time.  I can't tell if that's supposed to be a shipyard or if a giant wave just rammed that carrier into a bay.

As for the bomb damage maybe this is going to be a prequel and take place before the bombs actually drop during the "resource wars" when the U.S. was disintegrating due to a plague?  That would suck and is probably a stupid idea I just threw out there after reading the wiki to find out what year the nuclear war was supposed to actually happen (2077 according to them) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_(computer_game)#Setting).

I don't know. That would actually be cool if they manage to pull it off. At least they won't be going up against the original games.

Not everywhere needs to be exactly at ground zero you know?  If a major city was on the outside edge of a blast and mostly ravaged by fire and other secondary effects it could look like that, I think.

The thing is that this is Washington. Washington would not be on the outside edge of a blast. At least I don't think it would.

The missile defense shield just has to be 'mostly' effective.

Let's not get distracted from the epicness and Bethesda.

Bethicness?

When I think fallout, I think of shit like the Cuban Crysis. Technology wise it seems about right.

Crysis?

The Devs of STALKER would've done a great job. In fact, I expect Bethesda to at least consider throwing away the 'hit/miss roll die' crap combat if they do FPS. Will gauge how good it is based on STALKER combat alone.

There's just no way you can play a FP-perspective game where headshots count for nothing since you're not master rifleman, hence no 4x dmg for you.
And I wonder how they gonna deal with sniper rifles and AI behavior to it.

For those who haven't played STALKER, it's basically post-chernobyl Russia in year 2000 with great atmosphere.

That's what I was thinking too since everything is done in a 1950's duck and cover type of style but the wiki says the war didn't actually happen until 2077.  Plenty of time to develop a better anti missile system...

Sure, Fallout was fun n'all, and the news of a Fallout MMO is neato.

BUT WHERE IS MY FUCKING PLANESCAPE: TORMENT MMORPG, YOU DISEASED FUCKPIGS?

I am a 58 year old grandma. My interests are my grandchildren (ofc!), lolcats and my church. I like long walks, the films of Meg Ryan, and reading beside the fireplaces of out of the way country B&Bs. GIVE ME MY PLANESCAPE: TORMENT MMORPG OR I'LL ENUCLEATE THE LOT OF YOU WITH A MELONBALLER. My thought for today: 'Why not give someone a smile 'just because'.'

Creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepy.

Young kids these days...

Plenty of time to develop proper computers for the only places where human life would go on (Vaults), instead of the buttons and leavers shit they got. Technology wise Fallout is a mix between the 60s and Sci-Fi elements from that time. At least I've always thought of it that way, and Bethesda doesn't get to mess with my childhood memories :)

(http://cache.kotaku.com/assets/resources/2007/05/falloutpeeps.jpg)

The last picture is only a hair above fanfiction level quality...

Might be fanfic. It's linked from Kotaku.

It's not. It's on the official site.

Are they roasting a cylon?

I think that's supposed to be a guy in power armor.

YOU CAN SEE THE REMNANTS OF THE DAILY PLANET IN THE BACK THOUGH!

A grievous error in judgement.  My apologies.

Have to say, though.  I'm glad I love Fallout, and I am very glad that I don't suffer the brain-damaged nostalgia of people who looove Fallout.  Lighten up people!

Crazy.  I think it's pretty good.  Maybe the bro-grabs element of it is a bit cheesy, but the art itself, it's good.

Edit: Looks kind of like Craig Mullins (http://www.goodbrush.com/)

Except Craig Mullins has a bit more detail. It seems like Beth's art person just blurred a lot of the background details. It just isn't appealing and actually bothers my eyes. How long till whatever the fuck they're counting down to comes out?

Two full weeks.

Looks pixalated or like someone downsized it then blew it up a few times too many.

I'm amazed at how much you guys can bitch and moan about a game from a couple of pictures.  :-P

And the art is very much professional.

No one said the art wasn't professional. It very obviously is. But it looks like it was done by someone who LOVES Fallout instead of someone who is MAKING the new Fallout.

These people need to step back and look at what Made Fallout Fallout. Instead of looking at Fallout 2 and trying to recreate the magic. Recreating the magic doesn't work, ask Disney.

Yea - Alladin 2 sucked.

lol schild.

Isn't that a good thing if it's an official piece?

Loving your subject matter/work doesn't lead to real. serious. games.   

Good God you guys have sandy vaginas and the game hasn't even shown a teaser trailer yet. You see teaser promotional art and go all beret wearing artiste on it, Jesus.

It's the internet. What did you expect? Benefit of the doubt? :P

Perhaps less beret-wearing, coffee-house, bongo-beating arty derision of all things not from the magical land of acceptable media.

Heh, how the worm turns from people's assessments of other forums.

The sad truth is there already was a company making the kind of fallout we all wanted, they actually tried it twice and while critics and a very loyal and small fanbase loved them it was not enough to keep said company afloat.  Fallout 3 is not going to be like fallout 1 or 2, the company who made those games failed and it would be retarded for a new company to make the same mistakes again.

Threash is right and I reiterate my disappointment with this unfinished project.

One week to go.

(http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/2747/memorialmxs1.jpg)

That looks like DC exactly how it is now.

Having not actually played Fallout (I know, I am teh heathen) this thread had convinced me to plop down £8 on Fallout collection. I will apparently be playing it sometime next week, which means I will have started to play it about the point Schild is posting about the ending to this one.

You could have just watched the video :wink:. (http://youtube.com/watch?v=ESdMOxrXgtk)  It's some guy starting and finishing the game in ten minutes, he kind of exploits the battle system though.

Ironically there are similar videos of people finishing Morrowind super quickly, so Bethesda and Black Isle already have something in common.

Fucking Hell.

Uh, how exactly did he win that?  What did he do there at the end?  I recall having to kill a big mean mutant/robot guy at the end....

And how was he able to get infinate turns in a row when he got into combat, not giving the bad guys any way to attack him?

Um, aren't you thinking of fallout 2 ?

I think he just blew up the two installations rather than fight.

Easy to win a fistfight if you blow up the building it's scheduled to happen in.

Yeah he just took pickpocket/lockpicking type skills and stole what he needed to get into the bases with as little fighting as possible, then he used science to start the self destruct sequence.  My memory sucks so I don't know what boss mutant you speak of.  I don't quite remember the combat "trick" but if you started and stopped the round before the enemy's turn you could keep on start/stopping or something.

Actually there is a FAQ on it: (http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/197289/41841)
 Q: Can you explain the combat trick again?
 A: Use the 'A' key to start combat.  Direct your character to move as far as
   you want them to move while holding down the 'A' key.  When your
   character uses up all his Action Points, the 'A' key causes combat to
   end upon the end of his turn (when Action Points run out) and then
   starts combat up again.  In this way you can walk right past enemies
   without them ever getting their own turn to attack you.  This is
   necessary for the Military Base, and quite helpful at the Cathedral.

That was cool and all but I'm not sure it counts if you don't pick up Dogmeat.

I remember the mutant boss and I am pretty sure that was Fallout 1 since I never did finish Fallout 2.  I could be wrong.

Dogmeat was Fallout 2.  Pretty sure it was, anyway.

Nope, I think Dogmeat was 1.

You're right.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogmeat

Here's the Morrowind speed run mentioned earlier:
http://speeddemosarchive.com/Morrowind.html

I just had to link it because it's probably the funniest way I've ever seen to beat a game. SUPER JUMP!

I believe the funniest way to beat a game fast belongs to Ultima 9. The stuff required to do it is ridiculous. I remember you having to stack books and potions to use levitate to get to an island you normally wouldn't be able to get to.

There's a glitchy one for Oblivion on Youtube, too, where the guy beats the game in something like ten minutes.  Eight or nine minutes spent getting out of the first dungeon with Captain Picard, and then he fast travels to the imperial capital, grabs a stack of paintbrushes, stacks them up high enough to climb to the top of the cathedral, falls through the roof because of a clipping glitch, and the game notices he's in the final area and starts the final event.

Eh, does that really count as "beating" the game?

The one they have on now is cool. But isn't the trailer supposed to be already online?

The server was unreachable for a while and now it is showing an old fashioned TV "Please Stand By" message.  They probably just got into work and need to get their morning coffee.

(http://img238.imageshack.us/img238/8929/standbyql1.jpg)

That's what they had when I made my post hours ago :)
I was hoping that they posted it when the site when down and it was killed by people trying to watch it :(

Heh. From the 'Where's the Trailer?" spam thread:

Looks like a cinematic from a Fallout game.  Shocking!

Oh yes.  NMA is awesome right now.


It's TOO MUCH like Fallout!  Hahahaha.

I dunno. Kinda falls in line with what I said. Bethesda needs to make their own vision, not just be fanbois - or else it's going to feel forced. No one wants that.

It's a sequel, and they have chosen to maintain the tone of first two games.  But to me, that's what Fallout is about, and it isn't "forcing" anything to maintain that consistency as they move the franchise forward.

I thought it was OK.  I just don't care much for teaser trailers.  I prefer seeing some gameplay.

They do seem to have at least grasped it. I saw a bit of their own (more serious) direction as they moved out of the bus, but it's very reminiscent of the Fallout 1 intro in style, direction and action, save for the powered-armor stormtrooper at the end.

At least it sounds like they got Ron Perlman back.

However, judgement remains out until they show us the beef.

Meh.

I wish they would answer some basic questions like 1st or 3rd person.  Turn based or real time.

Yeah, but I consider myself quite teased nonetheless.

Yes. Teased.

Please to learn the lessons of your Elder Scrolls franchise.

ok. I retract my previous trolling, Bethesda delivered on the trailer. Now they just need to not listen to Schild. LOOK AT STARCRAFT 2 BETHESDA.

edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxSdbSNckTQ - youtube link for people that hate quicktime or can't stream from beth's site.

edit2: rofl (http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/9703/fallout3nc7.jpg)

I shouldn't have watched the trailer.  Now I have high hopes that they've managed to keep with the original theme and not go all goofy on it. 

NMA has several items (like this (http://www.nma-fallout.com/content.php?page=fo3-faq) and this (http://www.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=36055)), probably linked back when cars didn't fly and people could still get AIDS, that don't indicate neoplasmic goofies.

This game was just confirmed for the 360 and PS3.

Edit: That trailer was HOT.

Awesome, I'll have a machine that will manage to run it without begging for mercy.

Now you're thinking with power.

Trailer looks nice, but it was ultimately pointless for me.

Actual Gameplay plzkmfingthx

Heh, it was a teaser trailer. As far as I'm concerned, that thing captured the flavor of Fallout that I was hoping they'd capture.

I refuse to get my hopes up. Refuse.

Fallout 3, Bioshock, Age of Conan, Shadowrun (if I ever buy it)...  if this trend continues, I may never have to bother upgrading my PC again.

Trailer was great.  It shows they do grasp the style and feel of the original games, which I feel is one of the most important things to making the game fun.

And to answer a previous question, the mutant boss I was talking about was from Fallout 1 (I also had dogmeat with me when I went to fight him).  My whole approach was to fight my way through the game one bloody battle after the next, so I guess thats why I never realized you could just blow the place up without fighting the end boss, and why some of you dont know about the end boss, heh.  You get more story this way though :p.

I talked to the Endboss into committing suicide after I found out that all of his mutants were sterile.

This is pretty much the exact same thing I thought. I'm pretty happy this game is coming to the 360.

I find Oblivion to be better on PC than 360, but not by a massive amount.  If they gimp up the PC version enough then it's PS3 for me... assuming it's worth getting in the end.

Doesn't this mean that it's a pretty much guaranteed first person or an actiony third person game? :(

I'm the only person who fears consolitis these days?

Coming out on the PS3 and XBox was the worst news I've heard so far about the game (not hard, because they haven't announced anything, but still).

I don't really see the concern with this being on a console other than possible interface issues that could come up.  Fallout's interface has pretty much always sucked. The areas in Fallout have never been very expansive at all.  Nothing about this being on a console precludes it from being third person isometric and turn based. 

You'll likely see a marked improvement over other Fallouts even with the evils of consolitis looming in the future.  My only concerns still lie with Bethsoft as the developers.  The interface may be horrible just based on how bad Oblivion's was.  Console influenced or not, that thing was wretched.  Worries that this is going to be first/third with some sort of wonky action control should be based on, well, the Elder Scrolls games being that. 

This game is going to sink or swim on Bethsoft's competency as a developer, not because they're going to put it on the 360 or PS3.

I just make an effort to play a game on the machine it was designed to be played on.  I would bet loads of money that if Forza 2 was ported to PS3, it would suck suck suck because it is so finely-tuned to the 360 controller.  You know, like how Fallout would suck if you had to move a pointer with an analog stick to pick everything, or if Stardock ported GalCiv to 360.  If the interface does not fit, you must avoid it.

Although Oblivion had 3rd person I'm having trouble seeing Bethsoft make a radical departure from what they know and going to turn based strategic combat.

I think the teaser looks like it was made using the in-game engine so I'm guessing it will be first person or over the shoulder third person like an FPS or oblivion.  I think the most we can hope for insofar as turn based action would be a KOTOR like system.

I'm not opposed to them departing from 3rd person isometric and the AP/turn-based combat system if they can substantially improve the experience of adventuring through a vast postnuclear wasteland. However, they better damn well preserve the good parts of that system - such as the ability to shoot people in the eyes to blind them, or in the groin to cripple and stun them.

If it's just Postapoc Oblivion,  :mob:

From NMA, Pete Hines said:

Yes, that's in-engine (in-engine means it's done with game assets in our rendering engine, but isn't done real-time. If it was done in real-time, that'd be gameplay footage. This isn't something, for example, that was sent to some house [e.g. Blue Studios] so they could build assets and render it out, and create something for us to release [e.g. Dawn of War 40K intro cinematic]).

So... yeah. At least it'll be pretty. Too bad you wouldn't be able to make avatars that don't look like shit.

God Damnit.  Now I'm excited about this bloody game.  Mother Fucker.  Damn fine teaser.

Isometric view and turn based, please?

fallout est mort

vive fallout

If you mean First Person Post Apocalyptic Oblivion, then yes, isometric and turnbased. I've watched the hi-res of that video like 10x, while I'm stoked, the actual character model worries me because of well... the aforementioned Oblivion.

Oh, no no no. You see, now they have an excuse as to why everyone looks horribly disfigured...

Perfectly reasonable to think that everyone in the post apocalyptic future has downs or just a badly jaundiced complexion. 

Didn't one of the fallout intro movies have shots of the power armored troopers pacifying Canada in it? I could have sworn I remembered that. Another thing to consider is this is the East Coast, so who knows what quasi-military organization has sprung up there like BoS in California.

How do you go about explaining the bloom?

OOOHHHH, radiation.  Got it.

I remember reading that LookingGlass discovered the psychic monkeys in System Shock 2 were blocking attacks with an invisible sword during early testing, since LGS was using the Dark Engine from Thief 2.  I'm sure that anecdote will never have any relevance whatsoever to Fallout 3.  It's not like Bethesda has really been working on a world-building toolkit rather than a game since TESIII began.

I think that was Tactics

The guy at the end is BoS, the emblem is on his suit.  Guess they either walked over or had another ballooning accident or maybe another vault had them.

(http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/170/boszj8.jpg)

BoS Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brotherhood_of_Steel)
(http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/2240/200pxbrotherhoodofsteelgn6.jpg)

Edit: Added Image

Hmm, now that I look at them it is actually reversed...  Minor screw up by he artist or intentional "evil BoS"?  Who knows!  Actually I think the wiki image has been mirrored and is inaccurate, they have an actual picture of a BoS member in the wiki and the emblem is the same as on the powersuit.

Fallout 1 intro (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkBNKa2KXZE), about 30 seconds in.

Odd that the BoS is on the East Coast now; that could indicate an adoption of the Fallout:Tactics lore, where a BoS splinter group crosses the Rockies and reach Chicago. The Tactics intro (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFV1QvnLVsM) explains the origins of that group.

God, you fuckers are hell-bent on making me reinstall these games, aren't you?

You know, the new Metal Gear Solid 4 trailer says "War Has Changed" like 10 times in 14 minutes (long trailer...).

I'm all like "WAR HASN'T CHANGED, YOU ASSHOLES!"

War? War never changes.

Ah hell, I broke down and bought the fallout collection just because I can't find my Fallout 1 disks and I never played Tactics. That should help me fill some time 'till Fall 2008.

I bought the Interplay 15th anniversary collection solely for the Fallout disc and vowed to guard it with my life, and now I can only find the second CD which of course only contains gems like Redneck Rampage, MAX and virtual pool (http://www.zombiehof.com/goor/pics/shakefist.gif)

Where'd you buy it from? I'm thinking I really need to play these games.

Amazon has a DVD compilation for $20 or so.

Sadly, I don't have a DVD drive in my PC. I really need to upgrade that puppy.

$32 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106050)  :D

Copy/paste from a GAF thread, the guy got the info from a GI Article -


Sounds... promising... dare I hope? :)

I sure hope you can toggle the slow-mo. That shit is annoying.

Yeah, but can you make an NPC explode from too much sex?

Can you get a job as a fluffer?

I must have missed this one. Sounds like a glitch. Heh.

Same. I had to go find the OS X versions - my old disks no work any more. But now I am rejoicing. And you know what? I'm only a little ways in but the first one is every bit as good as I remember it.

(http://www.razorfield.com/postimages/foutagain.jpg)

Wait, what?  This sounds confusing as shit to someone who hasn't played Fallout.  So you're fighting in some typical faggoty pseudo-strategic RPG fashion, and when you run out of "action points" you play it like a shooter until they regenerate?  I hope this is some sort of misbegotten code for "Yeah, it has real-time combat like a real videogame, but you can pause it and fuck around with movement points if you're some kind of homo."

God I hate RPG combat in general.  We're way past the point where an RPG ought to just be an action game with deeper gameplay and character customization, but this particular aspect of this particular genre is fucking dysfunctional.  Put down your dice, developer assholes.  I don't give a shit what my agility stat is.  If the model of my sword intersects with the model of some guy's head and he doesn't yell "Ouch!" then your game is horseshit.

It took me a while to figure out what you were talking about but I finally got it.  So, to keep other people from having to spend a lot of time deciphering random internet spew I will just rephrase it for them into a coherent thought:

The problem is with you, because you obviously play a genre you don't like. Which is kind of retarded when there are enough ego shooters you could play instead.

Plus, find somebody who helps you out of the closet. Your abundant usage of homosexual terms in a completely unrelated topic shows you deny yourself some deep seated desires.

RPG != Action

It's hard to pin down because RPG as a term has been so abused it's lost almost all meaning. Since we're using RPG in game terms I'll use that and ignore the whole role-playing side it developed from (and I could care less about TBH). A pure RPG is more like a strategy game than anything else, you build up your character and have it fight the battles for you. The game itself is in the choices you make and the work you put into the character before battles, and to a lesser extent the decisions you make during the battles themselves. Action or FPS RPGs add onto RPG framework or merge the genre or are a different sub-genre, they aren't a part of the pure RPG.

So when you say RPGs should strip out all the mechanics that make them RPGs... I have to assume you're either off your rocker or are misusing the RPG term. What you're describing is an FPS game with the fallout setting, a story, and character interaction.

I do agree that the system they're using sounds weird as hell though. I'll have to see it in action before I get exactly what they mean I think.



I don't use "pure" in a condescending sense to imply that anything that isn't "pure" is less, just using it as a descriptor. I added this because inevitably someone would otherwise accuse me of being an RPG snob or somesuch.

I love action games, but I also like the turn-based combat of a lot of rpgs. I think there is plenty of room for both action-rpgs and tactical-rpgs, and I'll play both. Of course...bethesda is kind of killing the concept of action-rpg with ever iteration of elder scrolls and the great action-rpg Bloodlines killed troika...

So there's that.

Err, yeah, I'm pretty confused on this battle system thing.  Is the game in 3rd person Isometric view, like the old ones?  Or maybe just 3rd person with the camera floating around which ever way you want?  It did seem to say there was 3rd person, but that you could also switch to FPS mode in real time.....  Does that mean you actually shoot and based on where you shot depends if you hit?  And not on your stats?  I really really hope not.  How the hell do you work action points into that?  This isn't making any sense.  They really need to release some gameplay footage, heh.

Game Informer has a spread this month w/ some in game screenies.

Personally, I'm kind of wondering the same thing WUA is, I think.  What the heck is this VATS thing?  I never played Fallout, either, so it makes zero sense to me.  It sounds like you can play the game either in a Oblivion-ish, real-time action mode, or you can pause to switch it to a turn-based strategic mode, but when you use up your movement points for a specific turn you can continue to fight in real-time?  Wuh?  So it's a game that plays in real time while it's paused, and you're assigning action points until you run out but then you keep going anyway?  Either I'm really not getting this, or this system is truly bizarre.

If a system is hard to explain, that normally means it sucks. Even the most complicated systems of parry and counter in 2D fighting games can be explained easily. Hell, I can explain how the meta games in Disgaea work in plain-speak. Doesn't mean it's easy in action though.

Everyone has come to associate the term RPG with shitty transparently number-crunching combat, and not with anything vaguely resembling roleplaying.  So let me explain what I'm talking about.

Take KOTOR.  Tear out the combat system and have all the fighting play like JK2 or something.  Have my character stats, and the items which buff them, just influence things like how quickly I can move and how much damage I can take.  Replace the "+5 to hit chance" and "+1 to critical chance" special moves with action game moves that take actual skill to land properly.  Redesign the combat locations to accomodate this new system.  Make the party members bots.  Good ones, that you can quickly give orders to by tapping a hotkey.

Keep the character depth, the story, the quests, the non-linearity, and all the other things besides shitty combat that make it an RPG.  Keep the classes and levels if you must have them.  Just replace the combat with something that makes a non-RPG gamer go "Hey that looks fun!" and not "So are you controlling this?" whereupon you sheepishly reply "Sort of."

I like roleplaying games a lot more than shooters, but I like them in spite of their combat systems, not for them.

This from the guy who still plays UO.

Any opinion you have regarding RPG's and their merits is inherently worthless.  Thanks for playing, though.

I love how every dipshit who wants to rebut me in some way, but who can't actually think of anything cogent, will automatically go "LOL U PLAY UO" like it's fucking news or something.  Yeah dumbass, I like me some UO.  It does things other games don't.  Try again.

Your problem is that you don't understand that while this would be a superior game for you, for others it would be inferior. You narcissism might not let you grasp this (because you repeat the exact same thing with slower words like we didn't get it the first time) but this is what you would prefer. Not what everybody would prefer. Hell, there is JK2 to play for you, and I wouldn't touch JK2 with a five foot pole anymore. Yes, I played it but I find action games tedious and they come in the way of me enjoying the story. I force myself through them to enjoy the story just like you seem to do with RPGs with tactical round based combats. Its just different kind of games. Why can't you grasp that simple truth? The fact that there are two entirely different games in the same world for our opposite tastes is an advantage. I for example like to give commands to all my party members in a combat situation one after another, I hate hate HATE boted party members. Its a entirely different kind of game and what you are wanting here is nothing more or less than every game being tailored exactly to your needs, the preferences of other people be damned.

Hey Schild is it ok to link the GI scans? They're up at the usual place for fallout news :)

from the article - Fallouty Isometric is out. The options are first person and over-the-shoulder 3rd person (they compare it to RE4).

Here's how they explain the APs - "While you'll certainly be able to tackle enemies in real time first-person shooting, V.A.T.S. lets players pause time and select a target at their leisure. Once targeted, a zoomed-in view of that enemy will show all the places you could aim to hit the creature, and the percentage chance you'll succeed. This percentage is based on distance, enemy defense, his cover, as well as your ability with the weapon at hand, among other factors. Just like in the original Fallout, you'll have a set number of action points, largely based on your agility score. Every combat move you make will deplete this supply, at which point those AP will begin to regenerate in real time at a rate that also corresponds with your agility. Once you complete all your actions in V.A.T.S. you can continue to attack in real time, but this will dramatically slow the recharge of your action points"

Wow, my 'This Game Will Suck Balls'-sense is tingling.

Yeah, sounds worse from clarification to clarification.

I'm getting a very strong sense of "Turn based games will never be big sellers" meets "The fan base for this game won't play it if it isn't turn based" meets Bethesda's attitude of "let people do whatever the hell they like".

I'm guessing there'll soon be mods out that only allow one or other form of combat and also that the system they've got going is just going to seem retarded.

Again, that sounds like a TERRIBLE idea. Pick one play mode, because this combo shit is nonsense.

Also, WUA is being a moronic trolling bag of douche. Nothing to see people, move along.

.....damnit, I was getting my hopes up for this game.  Why the fuck do they have to add in that FPS action shit?  It's going to kill the game (well, maybe not, they could make a fun game out of it in there own way I guess...).  Just make it a turn based action game like all the other fallouts you bastards!

And WUA, yes, you seem to be trolling.  The whole dice rolling stat based combat thing is a genre.  I happen to like it alot.  So do many.  KOTOR was about a thousand times better as it was than it would have been as yet another Starwars action game (IMO).  Your post is like me going a thread about FPS games and saying "All this point and shoot crap is Bullshit!  All of these games would be much better if they got rid of it then added in stat points and skills!"  Having said that though, I do think Deus Ex was one of the greatest games ever made ;).

We all have that same concern about the combat system.  Even more so as they release details.  That wasn't WUA's point though.  WUA was being a douche and saying that the entire multi-million selling genre of stat based RPG needs to be replaced with more FPS titles because only homosexuals like the modern RPG system.

It was a troll post.  It's not actually intended to be rebutted or argued because it's pointless and it's real intention was to rile people up.

That said, Fallout I and II were party based, turn based, stat centric RPG's complete with conversation tree and multiple ending.

I didn't anticipate that Bethesda would just stop making RPGs the way they make them (first person, real-time) just because they bought a license that doesn't fit their mold.  It's they way that they make RPGs and has been for a long time.  I don't think they should call this Fallout III though, because it's not.  It might be set in the Fallout world but it's obviously a new game and not a sequel.

This FPS stuff combined with action points confuses me. Leave the FPS crap with Quake et al, and stick with what works for Fallout: turn based combat.

That being said...is there Psycho? There'd better damned well be Psycho. In Fallout when the going gets tough, the tough get Psycho. And the fur (among other things) hits the wall. I went through most of the end of Fallout totally juiced on Psycho. It was...glorious. And messy.

I'll remember that twitch combat makes a game automatically not an RPG, next time I'm circle-strafing some boss and pew-pewing him to death with spells in an Elder Scrolls game.

Right, go back to trolling Morrowinds mechanics in that other thread.  You've swirled your dick around enough in this one already.

I never said it makes it not an RPG, I said it wasn't part of the RPG framework. Adding this and that doesn't make something not from an RPG, but it's still just something extra added onto the RPG framework, not something you use to define RPGs.

Do you get that in your testicles?

Do you know what's sad? Stalker is more Fallout, than Fallout 3 would be :(

Yup, it's a contraction of the scrotal sac, as if a thousand fan bois got punched in the nuts and were suddenly silenced.

I have considered the combat description for an entire ten minutes and have realized what Bethesda is trying to say:

It's real-time *slap* it's turn-based *slap* it's real-time *slap* it's turn-based... *crying* it's real-time and turn-based... *more sobs*.

I don't really see the problem here.  It's Oblivion's game engine with a tacked on Max Payneish sort of toggleable combat mode that can only be used once in a while.  You can fight in real time, but if you want to go more tactical you can go this route.

I don't have a problem with it, as long as it's done well.

Well, that's where the doubts arise. It seems a hard system to pull off.

I'm just having a hard time picturing how an fps/turn-based hydrid is not going to be really jarring when played in fps. You are sitting there, staring at a screen with the gameplay moving at a typical turn-based pace? Oh lawd...

Well..KotOR showed it could be done, since KotOR is basically Baldur's Gate really zoomed in. I played both very TBSishly, pausing like mad to micromanage everyone's queue. So I could see it taking the next step and being full-on turn-based. It could be really cool with the pauses, I always liked how bodies froze in mid-air, particle effects frozen, etc. Imagine how cool it would be with a decapitated head bouncing along incrementally as the turns played out...

I think the problem will arise trying to appease the fps people without turn-based combat. It's simply not that kind of game, and shouldn't be.

Iirc, Tactics was also playable in real-time. Did anyone actually play that way? The game didn't seem to lend itself to real-time gameplay.

Now that you mention is, if it's anything like KotOR it might work quite well. I had initially thought it sounded something like the Infinity Engine pseudo-realtime/turn-based thing, so i'm hoping it ends up more like that. As long as they give a tickable option to pause every 'round' or whatever, i'll be happy.

I remember Tactics. I tried it in realtime and found it...difficult. So I stuck with turn-based.

However.

We'll take the wayback machine to Xcom3 and we'll talk realtime. I initially played this game mostly turn-based. Some weapons and tactics did not work well in turn-based. The headcrab thingies were very difficult to deal with in turn-based mode. However, it was very easy to raid opposing (or even allied...) factions for loot in turn-based (your agents didn't blow the living piss out of everything). Alien search-and-destroy missions were better in realtime, though. Sniper tactics became viable. Fields of fire and control became possible (headcrabs...). The toxiguns were far, far better in realtime than in turn-based (your best weapons against aliens). The main downside was trigger-happy agents with explosive weapons. Had to watch anyone with a rocket launcher VERY closely.

We'll just have to see how Fallout 3 pans out. The realtime thing makes me nervous. I'd rather have a very fancy isometric 3D turn-based game. RPG elements should be paramount in a game that always stressed the story. Combat should be fun, but can be anything IF they get the story right--I'm thinking System Shock 2 here.

Tactics' "continuous turn-based" thing felt tacked-on for twitchy mctwitchersons that put aggressive AI on and just waddled around with a gigantic machinegun (tactics? my tactics are to MURDALIZE YOU). it was pretty broken, or I just sucked at murdalizing.

I actually look forward to a first-person Fallout. I liked the atmosphere of C&C Renegade's viewpoint switcheroo and I loved the Journeyman Project games (which is close to turn-based first-person). to me it feels more RPG-ish, like "oh shit I just fell in a pit of spikes" rather than "oh shit my avatar just fell in a pit of spikes". yeah hew.

For the record, I do not consider KotOR to be real-time, it just looks like it is to the untrained eye.  I am not sure what my position on that was a few months ago but right now this is what I think and I will deny any accusations otherwise.  That said, if Fallout 3 has "pausable realtime" as in KotOR rather than some Max Payne bullshit, that would be fine I suppose.  Since it would be really turn-based but dressed up in real-time clothes.  I also invoke Big Gulp's last comment.


Hehe.  I agree on Tactics.

I played X-COM 3 in turn-based mode.  Real-time was too wacky.

I could deal with a KotOR system, because deep down, that's actually a turn-based system; you just don't have to pause every turn, if you don't want to.

The problem is, from what I am reading, its not going to be pauseable like KoTOR or Baulders Gate.  It looks like it is going the Max Payne route of running around shooting things, then going into a freeze frame mode that lets you use your AP`s when you want.  Once those are gone, you are stuck in real time mode untill your AP`s regenerate and you can use them again.

That`s at least how I`m reading it.  More clarification and an actual fucking video of gameplay would be nice at this point to help clear up the shit storm.

I've got the impression that they're trying to make it more of a choice to play through turn based or real-time or a mixture.

That is, you could use it bullet time style, hitting it every now and again when your APs regenerate and then back to real time or you can play turn based. From the sounds of it if you choose to just let the enemy have their "turn" your APs come back and you do things all turn based. The fact that they return slowly if you're in real time sounds like you have the bullet time style option or can do full turn based.

The problem comes in balancing it somewhat, if bullet time style is hands down a more efficient and better way of fighting than doing it turn based that play style becomes a handicap rather than a real option. Hence I think it's a compromise that is just going to result in pissing people off because the ones who like the system that works won't even pay attention to the other choices and the ones who like the one that doesn't are going to be resentful that their option sucks monkey ball in comarison.

Mass effect is also going for a real time drops into turn based when you want sort of approach.  The videos for that seem fairly natural and intuitive.

Personally, I would rather see a real time for world travel and interactions and forced turn based for combat myself.  I just prefer the strategic feel of a turn based combat system as I think it rewards cleverness and understanding of the games systems to a greater degree than real time combat.

Also, I find most real time style combat systems too easy in general.

Doesn't anyone remember X-Com Apocalypse ??

Think of the children - don't merge RT and TB Combat.

You mean like Fallout and Fallout 2?  I agree with you.  Also Ironwood when he talks about a game with real-time and turn-based combat glommed together in a futuristic game with 1950's styling.  Parallels!

Still, I'm going to reserve the harsh judgement until I see real gameplay.

Xcom3 wasn't that bad. Granted, it was kinda weird, but it actually worked OK. You just had to choose the right way to approach specific situations.

Having said that, I wouldn't have missed the realtime combat if it hadn't been there.

I just finally started in on Fallout Tactics this morning while drinking coffee.  It seems to have a realtime/turn-based setup.

If combat in Fallout 3 is like that, I can deal with that.  For those who haven't played, there are various settings for combat, but you can set it so that most stuff takes place in real-time, then drops to turn based once you are spotted by an enemy. You can also play entirely in real-time and you'll see your AP go down and then slowly recharge.

I'm not liking how people are likening this system to Max Payne, because the Max Payne series was actually good, and the combat was awesome.

I loved Fallout Tactics, but I left it on the full turnbased mode (like the originals) the whole way through, so I never saw that system.  As I understand it, most people thought that system sucked though.


I got bored of Max Payne after the first level.  It was just........really really meh.  Big let down.  Didn`t even want to try #2 after that, though I heard some better things about it.

I loved me some Max Payne. 

And you can't beat Max Payne 2 for an example of what a Sequel should be.

Also, Mona Sax.  Gotta love some Kathy Tong.

I am only complaining because if it turns out to be Max Payne with a post-nuclear theme, it won't be Fallout.  Don't promise me Fallout and give me Max Payne, that's not right.

Also, big minuses to Max Payne for the blood-trail-with-crying-baby level.  Almost made me hate the game completely, but thankfully its only competition at the time was Munch's Oddysee and Azurik.

IGN has a 4 page preview on Fallout 3.

I'll let you read the gory details and comment: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/800/800872p1.html

I can't say much since I haven't played the first two :(

The preview sounds nice, though I'm amused that even in video games Liam Neeson is a mentor figure.

why don't you pick it up then and give it a try?
(http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m20/r3dknight/Snap100.jpg)
(http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m20/r3dknight/Snap99.jpg)

I'm working on it!

rk47, that was funny.  Now I want to play again, again, just to try that.  I mostly went with PE/AG10 and rifles... and Bloody Mess.  Never got into the melee.

I hate to say it but I am hyped-up for this like a giraffe on coke

I vote for the random death by critical auto-burst as part of the charm :)
I just tried iron-man mode in F2, (No reloads on death) , was about to hit lvl 15 on my Unarmed combat fella...then he just died to a 53 dmg burst. My mind just went 'That's not fair!!!'  :|

Gamespot has a preview as well, but it's pretty much the same info worded differently.

Gamespot gave a glowing review to Horizons.

8.8. Sorry I just like saying that.

LOL U PLAY UO

Just to add to sinij's post:

Frankly, the fact you play UO pretty much invalidates any bitching you'll do about not liking RPG game design and finding ANYTHING antiquated.

So say folks outraged that the successful company digging up the corpse of their pet failed RPG franchise is with the rest of the world in not wanting to see turn-based combat again.

At least I know my old shit is old, I'm not walking around going "What do you MEAN it's not isometric?!" about a game being developed in 2007.

What's wrong with isometric. Too much 3d bullshit imo.

Even if Fallout 3 was isometric, it would not be on a hex grid.  NERDRAGE!

Nothing is wrong with isometric, Mr. Myopic just like to think that his isometric experience is somehow more valid then our isometric experience.  Obviously, it's OK that he likes an isometric game but the rest of us are just old farts because we can't get with the new mode.

Fallout isn't a failed RPG dumbshit. If Blackisle were still around we'd have had real sequels to Fallout years ago. It along with the Baldur's Gate series and Planescape are some of the most fondly remembered RPGs of recent times and they usually end up in a top computer game of all time list.

I'm pretty sure it didn't sell very well, neither did planescape actually.  The fact that black isle folded doesn't help your cause either.

If they made a game that does the stuff I like about UO, but with shiny 3d graphics and combat that wasn't crappy RPG-style combat, I'd be all over that shit in a heartbeat.  Ultima what?

Just saying.

Oh come on, that's just a touch revisionist. Black Isle Studios were a very successful company. They were bought by Interplay, who got rich off the Fallout and Baldur's Gate franchises and took the company to the stock exchange. Then they started doing the usual high-tech startup shit with directors driving around in fancy cars, creating multimedia franchises to make movies and soundtracks, holding expensive shareholder functions, etc while debts went unpaid. They sold out to Titus/Vivendi and ran off with all the phat lewt that they'd robbed from the employees. No really fair to blame their demise of the games being shit then, is it?

For a PC rpg, I seem to remember Baldur's Gate being awfully damn popular.  I'm going to say most fault lies with Interplay's excessive knuckle-dragging.

Not to put too fine a point on it but the 800lb gorilla of gaming uses a POV camera that is kissing cousin to isometric.  Also, pretty much every RTS ever made uses an isometric perspective.  There is nothing wrong with the technique.

Your myopia is really interesting.  Do you really ignore everything that doesn't mesh exactly in with whatever trivial statement you are trying to make?

And here's Murgos with his patented Rebuttal of Total Irrelevance.  Yes dipshit, I know RTS games use a top-down view.  What the hell does that have to do with anything in the middle of a god damned RPG thread?  You may as well have just blundered up and said "Turn-based strategy games still use turn-based combat, so take that WUA!  Haw haw!"

That was the dumbest fucking post I've read in... some time.  Seriously.  Did you think I was going to go "Wait, I forgot the RTS genre exists!  I am rebutted!  Aiiiee!" or something?  You love pointing out obvious information as if whoever you're addressing is too dumb to have ever heard of it, when in fact it's something they ignored because it's just plain irrelevant.

Like when I said I figured an Indiana Jones movie with someone besides Harrison Ford in the lead would tank.  You ran up and pointed out that the mildly-successful Kid Indy television show from years ago had a kid playing Indy and not Harrison Ford, like I was supposed to be fucking staggered or something.

Jesus.

To be honest with you WUA, I don't think I want to watch Harrison Ford in his diapers trying to hit some guy with a bullwhip. You'll just have to give it up that like James Bond, Indy can be played by someone else.


In response I haven't played many single player RPGs, but I have definitely played Baldur's Gate.

Probably because you repeatedly ignore obvious, and obviously relevant, information that is completely counter to whatever stupidity you are spouting today?

"No one wants to play stupid isometric bullshit, ignoring the millions and millions of people who do play isometric games, and also ignoring that 3rd person isometric is preferred play style for almost every MMO currently in existence because I just mean RPG's even though a lot of RPG's were made with 3rd person isometric views that sold millions of copies and are still remembered fondly!  But no one wants to play them.  Seriously guys.  No, really they just don't."

"No one wants to watch an Indiana Jones without Harrison Ford except for the millions and millions of people who have already watched Indiana Jones without Harrison Ford because they don't count.  I'm just making the point that no one will watch a Indiana Jones movie without Harrison Ford even though lots of movie sequels already switch actors in lead roles and do quite well and people are already used to watching Indiana Jones movies without Harrison Ford but those were on TV, see?  No one wants to see it.  I'm just right you know, because I'm special like that and my opinion counts more that proven past performance.  Seriously guys, my opinion is that important.  Like, hardly no one watches TV, way less people watch TV than go to movies.  TV is stupid.  Srsly."

So let me get this straight, you consider WoW to be an example of an isometric game?

Seriously?

What the hell is the point of arguing with you when you don't even know what all the fucking words mean?

Turn based games on the way out... just like poker or chess. Lets move with times and get it all real time.

[Edit: Added green tags for idi^h^h^h to clarify]

I never really thought you were a moron until this post Sinij. Poker on the way out? At least try not to be ignorant. Same with chess. I'd argue that there are more registered active members on ICC and some of the larger chess sites than some MMOs that are still alive.

Operator, load the sarchasm program.

I'm interested in you justifying the bolded bit of that statement. Feel free to mention Habbo Hotel or Virtual Magic Kingdom to help add weight to your argument.

Yes, isometric viewpoints used to sell games. But that was when we were all marvelling over the shift from 2D sprites to something resembling 3D. And then games started to have better representations of 3D through first person / third person view points and moving cameras and the like. In modern gaming, it looks cheap and clumsy for the most part for something to come out with a purely fixed isometric viewpoint.

Millions and millions of people used to love and watch black and white movies too. Apart from indie or student movies, I don't see a lot of people rushing to fill that void either.

And finally, it's been stated by Bethseda that players will be able to rotate the camera around enough to play in a pseudo-isometric viewpoint, if they are so mentally inflexible that they can't handle playing Fallout in any other way want to.

That's not fair.

If I have gained respect for a genre and a brand and a series, I am not unreasonable to expect 'more of the same' from the next installment.

Just saying.

Cry. But. But. But.

Meh. How dare I get on my trike and try to jump the sarchasm.

Apologies. Wonder what my deal was last night ><

I guess the CEO of EA, of all people, has decided that more of the same is a bad thing now (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070708/tc_nm/electronicarts_ceo_dc_1).  From his complaints about games being too boring and complicated I can only assume he has decided to join the cult of Wii.

/derail

IMO there are some characters that are so associated with certain actors that switching them will kill that franchise and it would be better to just retire the character. Indiana Jones and Snake Plisken both come to mind. (which is why I am about 75% certain I won't see the remake of Escape from New York.)

Though to be honest, I'm sure some people said the same thing when Sean Connery stopped doing James Bond.

/derail off

Not really trying to throw huge amounts of gasoline on the fire, really!

"Isometric" and "overhead" views are two very different definitions that get confused by "the masses" all the time.

WoW is not isometric. Everquest's 3rd person cams are not isometric.

Like I said there are millions and millions of people playing isometric games right this minute.  Technically games like WoW and EQII are not 'isometric' (the viewing angle is not equal on all sides but very few games that are referred to as isometric ever were) but they are a projection.  The fact that you can move the camera (i.e. foreshorten an axis) is incidental, you are still looking at a 2 dimensional object represented on a flat surface that is using tricks of perspective to appear to have depth.  Whether it's actually better to describe the technique as axonometric projection rather than isometric is academic when everyone has always used isometric to refer to diametric or even axonometric viewing angles.


Believe it or not WUA, when you look at an image on your monitor screen you are not viewing a 3 dimensional object.

I'd disagree. Sacred and Divine Divinity were great games. Just because the cool thing to do is 1st or 3rd person 3d doesn't mean isometric is dead. It's just not trendy. Cthulhu save us from trendy motherfuckers, anyway. They brought us RTS and tainted Brian Reynold's soul.

From what I understand:
isometric:
(http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m20/r3dknight/Snap61.jpg)

overhead
(http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m20/r3dknight/overlord02.jpg)

So the only major MMO that I recall playing in isometric view is probably UO.

I thought "isometric" was defined as the camera being affixed to the area, not to one person.  Your area loads, and you look at it (you can pan and zoom and rotate all you want, shrug), and the character(s) move from one corner of the screen to the next and back independently of where the camera is.

This, as opposed to 3rd person / 1st person, where the camera is affixed to your character, and you can still zoom/pan/rotate but you cannot detach it.

You know, the camera setup and control in WoW is exactly like in EVE.  So, is EVE isometric?

traditional isometic games like Fallout 2 and Jagged Alliance 2 has no such thing called 'camera rotation' it's fixed view. That creates problem when attempting to retrieve something blocked by the 'forewall' of a background, because you cannot just rotate view.

I'm not an artist and can't really describe the terms properly, but "isometric" is actually a pretty fixed (in view angle) art style that provides the illusion of depth by a different means than a more "free style" camera uses. Basically how I understand it is that it's a way of playing with perspective to provide depth, as opposed to how a more flexible 3D environment does so.

They fade out the wall in the foreground and you can grab items, or switch to an internal view where you can see behind walls. Isometric games have improved since the 90s, ya know. Though the definition has definitely blurred over time.

I'm saving an Ultima Worlds Online Tophat avatar for just the perfect moment, however it's a bit soon to replace Pyramid Head, I think.

Lineage was quite popular in pictophonetic land.

Yeah, he would appear to be a cunt.

We're discussing this internally at GG, and it was brought up that this is a new CEO, and not the one that said "indies don't have a freaking chance" 2 years ago.

So basically in your little world, there are only two game perspectives:  First person, and isometric.  The standard above-and-behind MMO camera is isometric, a direct top-down view is isometric, and a side-scroller is probably isometric too, right?

What a crock of shit.

Again, am I supposed to be over here going "Wow, Murgos is totally right once you let him subjectively redefine words!"

I'm not saying that good games can't be in isometric - I've played some very good ones. But to over-generalise, players like to have more control over the camera, or have gotten used to having more control over the camera angle. Isometric games tend to be a bit of a throwback to older gaming styles.

At the time I wrote the original comment I was thinking about how a lot of games that would have been fixed camera isometric POV at one point now allow players to swing 360 degrees around the map and to zoom in and out. Fallout, as a series, should really keep up to some extent with more recent gaming conventions than pure isometric viewpoints and fixed turn-based combat.

I know what you are saying, but no changes in a gaming IP will lead to franchise death as quickly as too much change.

Yes, I understand that.  You've kinda hit the nail on the head regarding my point :  We suspect that the next installment is veering quickly into 'Too Much Change'.  If you look at the Fallout 3 Demo that got leaked, that seems to me to be 'Just enough exciting technology change, but by God it plays on the fond memories.'

That's no problem - I'm keeping an open mind about Fallout 3. I'm just having issues with some posters - not necessarily here, but elsewhere - who have thrown a major crying fit over Fallout maybe being vaguely FPS or not having turn-based combat. (Caveat: I never really got into Fallout 1 or 2 - bought them, played them a bit, stopped playing them, forgot where I was, uninstalled. Currently playing STALKER, which may influence my attitude towards post-apoc games in FPS).

To which I'm sure the fanbois would cry :  Then make a game with that tech, but don't use the Fallout IP.

I remain neutral on the matter, but I suspect I'm going to be presented with a Turkey come release time.

You mean they are going to put things in it's butt? Or, your butt? What the hell...

What ?

Yeah, yeah, the quote is from 12 pages ago, but still - I really liked the Max Paynes, very disappointed there wasn't a third one. I'm actually playing through it again very casually now, and yes, tonight I got up to the first baby-crying level of suckitude. Tomorrow I'll gamefaq my way through it the fastest way possible and get back to the fun shootingness.

I agree though that Max Payne isn't what fallout should be. Make it a Fallout-spinoff, sure. Like that PS2 game. But not Fallout 3.

Turkeys man! They get stuffed!

Isometric means that the view angle is at a point where the angles between the x,y and z axis are 120 degrees.  Which was pretty much only done in Q-Bert.  Every other game referred to as isometric wasn't but isometric is what they are referred to as.  You have spent this ENTIRE thread referring to things as isometric that aren't.

Now you are saying there is fluid definition of isometric that's arbitrarily defined by you as you understand it?  Fuck that.  Isometric long ago was blurred to mean third person as regards to video games.

edit:  Let's put it in absolute terms, what angles of X,Y, and Z are allowed to be referred to as isometric?  C'mon smart boy, tell me why X=116 degrees (Zelda)  is ok to be referred to as isometric but not X=100 or X= 94?

Yeah !

And then work it out where x is a factor of the inverse Cosine !!!

YEAH, FUCKING TAKE IT ALL !!!!

Q-bert....and.....and......

Viewpoint.

I fucking hated Q-Bert.

I have Viewpoint in MVS form, it's so fucking hard.

Seriously, nobody but you in the entire fucking universe would call WoW an isometric game.  You sounded like an utter dumbfuck when you said it.  Just give up.

How about because that is what isometric means?

Ripped straight out of wiki, here is a list of some isometric games:

Notable examples of "isometric" computer and video games
 
Knight Lore was among the first games to use 3/4 perspective.
SimCity 2000 is one of many games that use 3/4 perspective.Q*bert (1982) : An arcade hit. Truly isometric.
Zaxxon (1982) : Early arcade space flight fight. Truly isometric.
Ant Attack (1983) : Home computer game.
Congo Bongo (1983) : Arcade game.
Knight Lore (1984) : Action-adventure computer game.
Marble Madness (1984) : Arcade game.
Spindizzy (1986) : Exploration-based puzzle and maze game for 8-bit computers.
Amaurote (1987) : 8-bit arcade game using 3/4 perspective.
Head over Heels (1987) : Popular action-adventure game from the end of the 8-bit computer era.
La Abadía del Crimen (The Abbey of Crime) (1988).
Populous (1989) : God simulator.
Solstice: The Quest for the Staff of Demnos (1990) : Puzzle game.
Snake Rattle 'n' Roll (1990) : An action/platformer game.
Cadaver (1990) : Adventure/role-playing game.
Landstalker (1992) : Platformer/role-playing game.
SimCity 2000 (1993) : City building simulation game.
Little Big Adventure (1994) : an action-adventure game
Crusader: No Remorse (1995) : Computer action game.
Transport Tycoon Deluxe (1995) : Transport company simulator/strategy game.
Civilization II (1996) : Turn-based strategy game.
Super Mario RPG (1996) : A role-playing game.
Age of Empires (1997) : History-based RTS game.
Fallout (1997) : A post nuclear sci-fi role playing game by Interplay. Technically trimetric.
Final Fantasy Tactics (1997) : A strategic role-playing game.
Ultima Online (1997) : Massively multiplayer online fantasy combat game.
Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines (1998) : A stealth-oriented real-time tactics game.
Baldur's Gate (1998) : Computer role-playing game in the Forgotten Realms D&D campaign setting.
StarCraft (1998) : Science-fiction real-time strategy game.
Habbo Hotel (2000) : A massively multiplayer online game run by Sulake Corporation.
The Sims (2000) : A simulation of people controlled by the player.
Virtual Magic Kingdom (2005) : A massively multiplayer online game run by The Walt Disney Company.

Isometric fixes the camera to a point at about 120 degrees on the x, y and z axis. Some games aren't perfectly isometric in fixed viewpoint (such as Fallout) and are actually trimetric, but hey, it's close enough to call it so.

However, getting things like isometric and trimetric confused is a long way from calling a floating third person viewpoint, or a game with a free floating camera, isometric.

Seriously, VIEWPOINT.

(http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/877/viewpointcdxs4.gif)

Also, I disagree with most of that list.

I pressed start and it won't let me join.  Do I have to put money in ?

I'm not going to throw a fit but I will need to be won over by it. I enjoyed the tactical style of Fallout combat with aimed shots, etc. I like realtime stuff too but sometimes it is nice to have a series that let's me think out my battles. And really, if you didn't finish the first two why do you care about the 3rd?

As for the isometric argument, for me isometric means the view is at an angle somewhere between 90 degrees straight up and flat with the ground. So yeah, 120ish is about right. That and a fixed camera.

As someone that has taken more than a few math classes, I'm going to have to go with the 120-degree definition, since that's what it means in mathematics.  There should be some other term for games with a grid that merely approximates an isometric grid... but there isn't so we're stuck with isometric.

Well, of course you do. However, stuff like Viewpoint is weak because its just a scroller that is using a isometric projection (and as Sandy White says (http://sandywhite.co.uk/fun/ants/) about Zaxxon, that worked as well with an orthogonal projection) . Ant Attack and Knight Lore use an isometric grid that you can move over in all axes giving a true 3D feeling to the viewer.

Sim City 2000 was much much later than 1982. Sim City wasn't even released until 1989. :)

Line break ftl.

It could be interesting. Post-apoc is a bit of an underused setting.

But I don't have time to play long RPGs anymore, so I'm just keeping an eye on Fallout 3. And occasionally stir the pot when I read someone go "It's not really Fallout because BLAH BLAH BLAH".

Well, as someone with a Comp Sci degree I've taken my share of math classes as well. (though in honesty, I've forgotten a ton of it. I've had zero use for it in the real world so far other than a few drunken physics discussions with a friend.) While I understand the mathematical description of isometric I am not picky about how it's used in games. It's sort of a "I know it when I see it" type of thing which like I said, really boils down to an angled viewscreen and a fixed camera.

Whatever you do, DO NOT PRESS CONTINUE BUTTON or we just might find out where rose goes.

Fine, I expanded the definition of Isometric further than other people, on this board, were willing to accept.  Silly me, knowing what isometric is and knowing that NO ONE was using it correctly I picked up how it has been used for years and went with that.

So, what?  WUA's point that 3rd person perspective games where the ratio of the angles is mostly arbitrary but larger than some unspecified value is still belayed by the millions and millions of people playing games with 3rd person perspectives with mostly arbitrary angles in some unspecified ratio.

in, short, I expanded the definition of a word a little further than was supportable and WUA is still not capable of believing anything other than his own press no matter what evidence is stuck in his face.

Um, yeah, you sure taught me some unspecified lesson.

 :roll:

So is WUA theatre going to take an intermission soon because I would like to hear more about fallout.

I hope so, I'd also like to find out more about Fallout. Though I must say I'm quite impressed with how well they've all argued something so trivial.

Isn't that pretty much the M.O. of every thread here if not on the entire intartubes?

which, the isometric argument?
I'd like my RPG to be first person. I realize FP views give me a better atmosphere overal, in terms of surpise and not knowing what lies in the next cornerl. I won't be asking for a classic fallout perspective in game, it has a cross hair in the middle, it should be FP, putting third person view is okay, but just for the sake of stroking my E-Peen while I'm wearing a dusty power armour and standing over a dead mutant.

I've found quite a few constructive arguments that lead to people actually gaining knowledge. But this one seemed to just revolve around 2 people arguing what isometric is while others try to add their opinion and being ignored in doing so.

Have they posted anything recent about the game? I only remember the trailer and with E3 having just passed maybe I missed some screenshots.

My failure to use green has caused you to fall into the chasm of sar. Sorry for that. But nope, I've not seen anything recent about the game and I'm chomping at the bit for it now that I've finished Fallout Tactics. Guess it's time to run through Fallout 2 again.

There was some stuff in a recent Game Informer. A coworker's son has a sub and she's bringing them in when he's done. Nothing earth-shattering, and it is print...we've probably seen all those screen already though it's a decent read anyway.

You spend the beginning of the game in the vault, growing up as a tutorial. Character gen is your father holding you up, he's masked at the time. After you pick your physical appearance, he appears unmasked as a modified and aged version of you. Pretty nifty, though he'll sound like Liam Neeson no matter what he looks like (I hope it's not shades of Picard in Oblivion or Spock in Civ4). Learning to walk is the movement tutorial, etc.

I always like the turn-based aspect of combat, but I guess I'll give the new way a shot. Sounds way more fps, though. Guess I'll be sinking a ton of points into agility to get more targeted shots...

Man, Liam Nesson playing a mentor/father figure is so out of character for him. Wonder if he can stretch himself that much.

The man's an absolute Lion of an actor.

I like first-person RPGs a lot, but I am quite afeared of them turning out as a FPS with levels.

Intratubes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtOoQFa5ug8)

Leonard Nimoy was absolutely perfect in Civ4.  "You know her life was saved by rock 'n' roll".  Hearing Spock recite Lou Reed kicks a whole lot of ass, my friend.

Wow, I may have to get Civ 4 just to hear that. Either that, or I'm going to need to brush up my advanced search element use in Google so's I can find a sound file of that.

it depends on how many feud-seeking personalities are attending the thread.

I'll give you the factor of reciting Lou Reed. But it was a wooden and shitty performance given across the entire spectrum, I could just picture the guy looking at the clock as he read through each line. He was beaten to a bloody pulp by the VOs in Alpha Centauri.

Amusingly I was looking for a good faq on crits in fallout 1 (which I'm replaying currently) and I found this article.  Forgive me for not reading all 13 pages to see if this info already got listed but here it is:

http://www.critical-hits.com/?p=898

It gives a pretty good description of the vault assist targeting system that actually made me feel a bit less jaded about the whole "real time" thing.  I was reminded of the time back before Baldur's Gate where I was really angry about it being real time.   When the game finally came out my perspective obviously changed.  So at least for now I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on that part.

The one thing that really worried me in this article though was this:


That little "not so much the sequel" bit really worries me.  The sequel was superior in a great many ways.  Given Bethesda's love for sandboxing I start to wonder if these guys "love" fallout for all the wrong reasons.  The original was probably far more open ended in a sandbox fashion so that's the only reason I can think of that they'd prefer the first one over the sequel.

I dread more and more that Fallout 3 is going to emphasize a sandbox and have a craptastic narrative as a result.

I have lowered my expectations so that I am only looking forward to a futuristic Morrowind/Oblivion, if they manage to pull off a Fallout game instead then all the better.

Four pages of quotes from completely out of touch fanbois. (http://www.somethingawful.com/d/weekend-web/fallout-scarleteen-armenianclub.php)  Warning, nerd rage. (http://img115.imageshack.us/img115/8195/emotarghye0.gif)

Chances of him not actually having a girlfriend and just making it up - 100%.

By 'girlfriend', he meant 'security towel he sleeps with'.

He broke his Realdoll.

That SA link was fun.  It's full of just the sort of "If the combat isn't a shitty-looking anachronism tracing it's roots back to tabletop games from thirty years ago then it's not real RPG gameplay!" bullshit I love to hate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KhM3jVehVo

I never seen this before.  :awesome_for_real:

(http://images.epilogue.net/users/mausfoot%20%20%20%20/shadesofgray.jpg)

(http://i241.photobucket.com/albums/ff26/stuabrtow/fallout3-se.jpg)

How much extra are you willing to pay for the lunchbox? (http://www.amazon.com/Fallout-3-Amazon-com-Exclusive-Survival/dp/B0017QFX30/ref=br_lf_m_1000233051_1_9_ttl?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&s=videogames&pf_rd_p=405465401&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_t=1401&pf_rd_i=1000233051&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0VMKPSER04WK4D4QBP1Y)

I've never bought a collector's edition of anything before.  But this?  This will be bought.

CE for sure, but I think I'm going to pass on the over-priced clock.

Oh, I'm so totally getting that. This is the best necropost I've seen in a long time.

I fear it's going to be a plastic piece of shit and I buy almost any LTD edition. CE for me. I just want the lunchbox.

The lunchbox makes me want to bring my lunch to work more often. $120 though? Eeek. Even my coffee table concept art book fetish won't allow me to shell out that much. Or maybe it will. Oh man, I'm confused.

The $79 version that you can preorder at regular stores comes with the lunchbox. You're paying $40 for what will likely be a plastic ugly clock on this Amazon version.

you can wear it as a bracer. In-Game Pipboy replica.  :drill:

I may have to buy the collectors edition it seems.   And damn you all but I'm so finding my Fallout 2 disks now. 

Played through the original Fallout going fists only.  I'm sure I brought out a rifle a few times but not many.  I forget what perks I had but I know one was Bloody Mess.  It never got old punching someone and having their ribcage explode EVER!  By the end of the game that boss never had a chance against my fists of fury.  The one mistake I did on my first playthrough of the original was that I accidentally got into a fight and basically killed a bunch of people at the junkyard and never got dogmeat. 

As far as fallout 2, hell what other game has you arm wrestle a mutant and become his sex doll if you lose.... damn you ball and gag. 

i think unarmed is pretty overpowered early game Fallout 2, but random encounters with bad dudes with guns usually fuck me up. F2 really screwed the pooch for those who don't pick Outdoorsman as tag skill since late game randoms get more ridiculous and escaping isn't as easy as JRPGs.

Damn. It. I must have that lunch box.

Heh. Talk about revisionism. Black Isle was an internal division created within Interplay.

Edit: I was going off memory but managed to dig up corroborating evidence on mobygames. http://www.mobygames.com/company/black-isle-studios

Stonekeep II would've been interesting. I still have that terrible first one. With that ugly manilla book, Thera.

Ya, kind of like Black Isle did when they wanted to do a spiritual successor to Wasteland.

IP is overrated. Mass Effect is much better for not being KotOR3 imo. Maybe a bad example due to Lucas the Hutt.

hm. I duno, I see ME as a decent game but the side quests is a waste of time. It just gets in the way of it all, Mako Driving, Decryptions. Bioware obsession with mini games will extend to Dragon Age probably.

Bumpage.


A bit annoying, since it means I'll now have to source either the New Zealand or UK version if I decide I want to play it (aka GTA4).

More interestingly is the fact that if the OFLC has had a chance to play through it (and ban it) it means the game should be real close to going gold.

Not quite how it works. Generally rating groups are given a list of all the mature shit in a game prior to playing a near-final build. In this case it sounds like that's what happened as they refused classification. I would expect it to be censored before they get a playable copy. I recommend importing the american version.

Having a 360 and no PS3 for the time being, it'll depend on the various region lockouts. I think according to play-asia, the US version of Oblivion was region-locked while the PAL version wasn't region-locked (go figure!).

Either way, if it's worth playing, I'll just do a GTA4 and import whichever (uncut) version works on my machine. Either way, F3 is coming soon!

- Now, in my opinion, E3 Full Trailer is very good (especially the 'retro' part, they nailed it):

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36202.html (http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36202.html)


- Gameplay demo by Todd Howard, on the other hand, is totally MEH. I realize that, in a situation like that and with limited time, you can't show off dialogues and relative choices, but at least give us a glimpse of other roleplaying aspects of the game (if actually present :P), not just lameass and brainless combat, damnit.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36197.html (http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36197.html)

I love the part with the babies popping out and then the daughter's facial expression.

Dad's expression was even better.

Also, I think the whole thing looked great.

You should anyway.  You'll save about $50 that way even if it was sold in AU.  I learned that quickly when I lived down there.

That was really well done.

Hmm.  The trailer did look good.  Cautiously optimistic, against my judgment.  Bloody Mess caused a lot of that optimism.

I don't know who that dog is, but he's not Dogmeat!  You can't replace my Dogmeat!  Waaaa!!!

I'm probably just being a little bitch of a fanboi right here...that trailer was disappointing.  I don't know how to put it other than it feels like they are just ripping off the originals poorly.  It's definitely a je ne sais quoi type thing permeating everything they have released thus far*.  Maybe it's just a residual effect of the retarded 'Oblivion meets Fallout' music they put on their front page a while back.


*except for the bits about character creation, that has actually sounded kind of cool.

I think you guys need to realize that a turn based, isometric game just isn't gonna fly nowadays.  At this point, what choice do you really have?  Are you willing to wait another ten years in the hope that someone will meet your demanding, old school specifications?

The game will come out, it'll be different but it'll still be good.  Suck it up, already.

I'm not bitching about the gameplay format at all.  The more games that resemble Deus Ex in gameplay the better in my book, and this one might.

I know what you mean and I agree. I think the main difference is that the original Fallout theme stuff was copied from govt. documents, videos, and logos from that time period. The Fallout 3 stuff doesn't appear to be and therefore doesn't look authentic. It's like a 70s version of a 50s show.

The gameplay itself looks fine though a little gory.

I just hope that they include plenty of actual roleplaying material along with that gameplay. I also hope that the VAT system is more than a version of bullet time with percentages, hopefully it'll be a viable way of going through the game rather than a one shot thing for the start of a combat enounter.

Thirded.  And that's a great way of putting it.  Though I thought their choice of music was pretty good.

Speaking of, did anyone else get Fallout 2 chills when "A Kiss to Build a Dream on" started playing in WALL-E?

VATS doesn't seem much like bullet time to me actually, but more like modern version of the turn based "stand there and exchange shots" experience from older Fallouts... as while your queued shots are being executed, the enemies are firing at you and you're rooted in place. Suspect the demo VATS was quite rigged for better effect, as the accuracy was way above what the shown percentages would suggest. So would guess these one shot kills aren't actually how it works in normal game.

For a sample of roleplaying material there's a PCG hands-on preview here: http://www.gamesradar.com/pc/fallout-3/preview/fallout-3-hands-on/a-20080714133932662026/g-20070327151320531089 ... has some mild spoilers for couple early quests but gives much nicer insight than these combat demos.

Yeah, you'd want to bump up the hit rate for a demo.  It was nice to get a headshot in Fallout but you'd better be damn sure your squaddie could pull it off or you would just be wasting ammo, or worse, perforating a teammate.

I liked the snippet of VATS mainly because of the turn shwip-beeboops.

The TV bit failed on subtle humour. Made me sad. Oh well.

Aha, *here* is the Fallout thread :p  Knew there must be one somewhere, sorry for the redundant thread earlier :)

After watching the trailers my first two thoughts were "Half Life 2?" and "console game!". Then I thought "where's the retro?". Now I'm thinking "oh who cares just let me play it!!11". Totally agree also that it's going to be the extent of roleplaying in it that makes or breaks it for me. If it's all combat and is too HL2ish then I will be upset muchly, but I really hope that won't be the case.

VATS looks rather cool, although I thought the earlier teaser trailer captured the fallout "feel" better than the new one.

I'm siding with the cautiously optimistic crowd.

That article reassured me a lot! Thanks!

Yeah, that article put me at ease after all the "Oblivion with GUNS!" claims from IGN and the such.

Part that sealed it for me:

Ya... definitely looking forward to this game after that article.

They've certainly embraced the gore of the first two games.  I wonder if they'll do the same with the risque quests?

The Ladykiller perk was described in one the previews.  It give you enhanced conversation options with female characters AND a 10% bonus to damage to female characters.  Uh, not sure where exactly they are going with that but it's certainly suggestive...

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/07/hands-on-fallou.html :drill:

That article could have been pared down to:

It looks great, sounds great, plays great, and the story is great, but I'm still going to complain about it!

Umm, the article says the story is the problem.  When you call the writing fanfic material that's not a compliment.

Although I'd like to know how you can indict the whole game's story and writing through one brief play session....

(meh, he's probably going to be right anyways.)

Meh, he's put Fallout 1 & 2 up on a pedestal, there is no way he was going to be happy.

The writing wasn't all that great, for the most part, in either of those games but the story all together and the interactions with the environment and the open-ended-ness of the play was very compelling.

Also, Brotherhood of Steel is already the black sheep of the series, only played for completeness sake.   It's been 10 years since Fallout 2, I'm just happy to get a post-apocalyptic game that tries for an open-ended and expansive world.

So I assume there should also be a Maneater perk as well?  :drillf:

As for the story, didn't the reviewer say he wasn't allowed to do the main story quest, only a few of the side quests?  I thought it was fun that completing the one quest the 'good' way got you a house and some character customization stuff.  I'm a sucker for character customization stuff, though.

He had half an hour to play the game, and the reviewers are told to stay the hell away from the main plot line to avoid the spoilers, iirc. And add to that, the actual complaints he makes are "i didn't particularly like the characters" and "it's trying too hard to be like the previous Fallouts" ... while he admits "the story and characters are suitably gritty and conflicted".

Given that i'm not sure if it's the story that's the actual problem in that review...

There is, it's called Black Widow though :drillf:

House decorating?  I'm sold.

I wonder if I can get both Black Widow and Ladykiller?

This.

I shouldn't have said the story is great, but come on... It really feels to me like he is searching for something to complain about.

Go watch the gameplay demo no G4.com's E3 coverage.

http://e3.g4tv.com/e32008/videos/26939/Hands_On_Fallout_3.html (http://e3.g4tv.com/e32008/videos/26939/Hands_On_Fallout_3.html)

You get to see gorey deaths, the pipboy, lockpicking mini-game and at around 8:00  messy death by teddy bear. That sold me right there.

He built a rocket launcher from a woodchipper and killed someone with a teddy bear launched from it.

That is just made of awesome.

The moderators annoyed me somewhat, I guess thats what passes for hip comments for the young crowd nowadays.

But the gameplay demo was made of win indeed.

(http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t51/Xerapis/sharkattacknma.jpg)

Damn, it's looking good.

I picked up a preorder box today for the 'Nuka Cola' bottle opener.

where?

Best Buy, $5 for a nifty bottle opener! And I suppose $5 off some games too.

<edit> A Picture.
(http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a235/rattra/nuka_cola.jpg)

sweet. Thanks.

Amazon is starting to look like they are charging a ton for the radio.... Think it's like $69 for the collectors at EBgames.

It is $69 at EB, ordered it a few days ago.

I just saw the Tenpenny Tower video and reverse pickpocketing live hand grenades made me :awesome_for_real: IRL.

The ghoul's reaction to that was priceless.

And how about old man Tenpenny? Quite the party animal.

After seeing that, it's going to be hard not to hook up with Mr. Burke. Yowza.

Crab People.

Awesome.

Played the game at PAX. VERY tight. The mixture between turn-based and action-based with their targeting system was pretty neat. Wasteland is pretty detailed and UI is good. I'm looking forward to this.

Lucky you. I sat in the hour long lineup for the presentation, to which they didn't bother telling the line that all the people that were in the theater for the previous presentation where allowed to stay. As a result, 3/4 of the lineup didn't get in, and weren't told they weren't getting in until an hour later. You may want to suggest that the ywork on the logistics on that next year. (otherwise, really enjoyed the show)

Yeah, it was recognized that that was a colossal fuck-up, amongst other things. Trust me, the guys at PAX are doing what they can to make it even better and are taking stuff like this seriously.

Ahh, voiced by the same guy that did Lucien Lachance...He must be the resident psycho.  :why_so_serious:

While I'm one of the 1.3 people around here that liked Oblivion, I hope that they have more than the same three voice actors.

UPDATE!



 :uhrr:

 :ye_gods:



=================================

And yet I've still pre-ordered the collectors edition.  Lunch Box and Bobble-Head, Mmmmm.

Damn you, Australia.

At least I should still get my lunchbox.

I don't get it.

Was there a depiction of syringe use? Because honestly, that was fucking awful in Bioshock and my fiancee would leave the room.

Is there any word if Fallout 3 will have something like the Construction Set that you get with TES games?  Because that will make it much easier to ignore Australia's government and the Bethesda cavemen.

Yegolev hates Spore but loves him some IV drug use.

 :why_so_serious:

I think I read on their FAQ that they didn't know or have plans for any construction sets. 

Edit:  Went back and looked, they aren't sure if an editor will be included. 


FAQ here (http://fallout.bethsoft.com/eng/info/faq.html).

 :oh_i_see:

Not sure why I should care, previous Fallout games used all fictional drug names and didn't show me some dude shooting up.

I took my pill and I'm no longer outraged at something stupid.  I also ate a tiny pie.  It was delicious.

I'm still angry on principle.

For the record.

This.  Tempest in a teacup ??

I even prefer if they take the old names. They are part of the Fallout lore.

MUTHAFUCKAS I NEEDS MAH CRACK PIPE BITCHES AHLL BE ALL UP IN YO LIKE YO WASSUP FOO IMA FUCK YO MAMA

Now I find I can't properly get into character. This decision kills the roleplaying potential of this game.

I agree.

I'm still angry of principle. I'm tired of the Australian review board telling me what I can play. >_<

Roleplaying?  :grin:

Actually this is why I was angry, not because of the actual name change since it's insignificant.  I feel like the Australian government is landing those choppers in my yard.

Your homeworld is under attack by hostile forces!

(http://ll-374.ea.com/spore/static/image/500/042/374/500042374919_lrg.png) (http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=usr-riederman%7C2265633096%3Asast-500042374919%3Apg-20)

Goes to show what is in a name.

Yes, or in the brains of idiots.

I've been reading up about this game. And looking at the media around. While I still have reservations on the whole they're pretty well offset by the feeling of "shit, this could be great".

It's not often I feel that about a game these days.

Spore had that feeling of potential as well.

Just sayin'.

Spore doesn't let you place explosive boobytraps in people's pants. I need this.

I'm really looking forward to a more current Fallout.  I'm one of those rare people who missed the whole Fallout craze back in the days of yore, and when I tried to play them a little while ago I just couldn't appreciate the way the game handled.  I love the lore and reading about the game, but actually playing them was pretty harsh.

Not for me it didn't. I never felt Spore would be anything better than B&W with less fail. (by that I mean in terms of delivering on expectations, not in content and game style).

My only concern is with the character aspects of the system. I wonder how willing they are to cut off people from aspects of the game if they have low speech skills, low science, etc. I think that unless a lot of these skills are integrated well it could actually ruin a bit of the RPG aspects and make it feel more tactical-actiony rather than tactical-actiony-character strategic.

But then they've made a few RPGs so maybe this won't be an issue. I haven't played any since Morrowind though, so I can't compare.

I'd say your concerns are warranted, having played Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion.  While I am almost uncontrollably excited about the combat, I'm trying very hard not to think about the "fiftieth-copy of Michael Keaton from Multiplicity" RPG elements.  If it's going to be Oblivion After The Bomb, it will be in the RPG sections.  Which is fucking sad.  They are already showing how they are going to attempt to bandage over the missing organs with the inclusion of Not Dogmeat, as I plan on calling him.  I'm hoping that they will at least use two different voice actors than the ones who voiced 98% of Oblivion.  Will it have Adult Language?  Doubtful.  Will you be able to work as a fluffer?  Doubtful.

I'm all excited about Bloody Mess, though.

So I never read anything detailing what Bethesda is going to do - is fallout being modified globally for a better rating? Are they removing all the 'naughty bits' and re-applying?

I've been reading more about it since I posted above (this is useful procrastinating) and I can say the following:

1. They seem to have a lot of skill related stuff. From skill related lines of dialogue (can only get to say certain things if you're strong, or great at science, or a great repairman/doctor, etc supposedly over 40,000 lines of dialogue in the game) to skill checks on a number of quests and other such things. They have said that one character won't be able to do everything in the game. I still have some reservations, but overall I'm much more confident.

2. They supposedly had 40 different voice actors.

3. It still has strong language. (You will hear fuck-lots-and shit, hell, god damn, etc in the second video linked below)

4. Los of drug use around. Some sex. You cannot kill children in Fallout 3, though.

Check out the videos if you havn't already. http://fallout.bethsoft.com/eng/downloads/videos.html

They are really very good and I think show a whole lot of why this game could be fucking awesome. I've watched them 3 times each now.

I think I've read nearly everything on the game easily around on the web at the moment, and I'm setting myself up for a big fall. But I'm going to predict the game will be fucking awesome.

Not that I have superlove for Will Wright, but anything related to Molyneaux these days (and for quite a few years now) has had pretty low-to-non-existant expactations from me.

http://www.prepareforthefuture.com/ launched. My PC at work is retarded and has no flash, so I can't see if there's anything new or useful there as yet.

EDIT: According to forum fanboys it has stuff on there that is "awesome". I will remain  :oh_i_see: until I get home and see for myself.

Whatever it is, I can't see it. After clicking "US" it changed my URL to this: http://www.prepareforthefuture.com/?fbid=BQNhHv. Somehow I think the fbid = forbidden. Maybe?

Deleted cookies, refreshed and picked UK. It's loading something big...

Edit: It is :drill:. It's pretty much a TV with 9 stations each done in 1940/1950 style with the Fallout twist. There's some in-game footage at the end of each station too. Also, you can do the Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test.

Pretty nice. Not much content really. But I think it demonstrates that thay've got a pretty good 'feel' for the game, even is it's not exactly the same feel as F1&2.

IGN is doing a week of previewish stuff.

Day 1: Weapons, http://au.xbox360.ign.com/articles/911/911919p1.html
Day 2: Skills and Perks, http://au.xbox360.ign.com/articles/912/912469p2.html

For the record:

Australia uses the same classification system for movies and printed materials as for video games (sensible). Unfortunately at this time, video games can only get an MA15+ rating and not the R18+ rating that films can get (not sensible). If the Office of Film and Literature Classification refuses classification on something, then it can't be legally sold within Australia.

If the shooting up of morphine was deemed graphic enough, it might have pushed Fallout 3 into R18+ territory and thus into the refused classification area. Of course, this doesn't mean much to anyone but Australians and we aren't a major market. But what is interesting is that the discussion worried someone in Bethseda enough to consider what would happen if the mass media got wind of a major game being released that let players shoot themselves up with known drugs. So an issue that started in Australia got rolled out world wide to avoid any kind of problems of 'video games corrupting the youth' that could appear on Fox with Fallout 3 in the starring role.

I don't know why they would care, it worked wonders for Rockstar Games.

I discovered this just now: http://gamesblog.ugo.com/index.php/gamesblog/more/fallout_3_vault_106_walkthrough
I must say that it is SPOLIERISH in a small way, so maybe don't read it, but I does make the game sound more fun. Unfortunately the third part of the IGN preview thingo has some stuff that sounds shit in it (giving water to a bum to redeem yourself from evil? wtf?) so overall my level of expectancy has stayed the same.

On the 'drug name' thing, really it's a bit of a stupid talking point. I doubt you would really get any big response to drug use in a game at this point, at least insofar as sales are concerned, and the Fallout thing was a dumb one anyway: why have morphine in a game where all the other drugs are fictional? It's just inconsistent and amateurish more than anything else.

I don't think having to yank all copies of the game with the Hot Coffee mod and replace them is considered "working wonders". All it takes is a Fox News crusade and enough people to yell to get the game reclassified and then Bethseda is looking at a recall to do exactly the same thing.

Remember: extreme violence is a-okay. Sex and drugs? BAD AND HARM OUR KIDS.

The more info comes out, the more stoked I get.

Please, please, please, don't be a fuckup like Oblivion.

You know what's going to happen. You know it.

 :cry:

I'LL BE GOOD MOMMY, I'LL BE GOOD.  DON'T LET THE BAD MAN HURT MY FALLOUT...

Reading more on the Karma system today at IGN is making me annoyed. It sounds shit. You can kill half a town then leave and no one will chase you. Not ony that you can return 24 hours later and they'll have forgotten. That's just retarded.

Sigh. It was looking so good.

That's too bad. How cool would it be to roll into town and have old women closing up their shutters and townsfolk run screaming "OH GOD SAVE US, HE'S BACK!!!"

Well, that's ok.  I don't mind that so much.


 :ye_gods:

Come on, in the post-apocalypse, badass mutant assholes are going to kill and rape half of your town every three days or so. It's the post-apocalyptic equivalent of dog bites man. How could you possibly keep it straight which crazy wanderer from the wasteland it was this time?

That crazy wanderer killing half your town is not the one you give a lip the next time you meet him.

Maybe, if the engine is good enough you might see the fear in their eyes.

When I was playing the psycho-wanderer, I generally didn't leave half the town alive.

Like Lee Van Cleef said in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, I always saw the job through.

And it gets leaked.. 3 weeks in advance. I wonder if it'll be like GTA and I'll only use the original disc to play the ending.

 :drill: :drill: :drill: :drill: :drill: :drill: :drill: :drill:

Bah, I don't have a modded 360.

It has ?

http://www.nfohump.com/index.php?switchto=nfos&menu=sections&sectionid=22

It is a review copy, but I'm not exactly sure what the difference between that and a normal copy is.

Maybe the Blancocheck included?

From reading the forums it's a retail copy they're tagging as a review because no one outside of the guy who is uploading it knows if it's a gold copy.

I'm pretty decently sure final review copies hadn't gone out yet. This probably came from within Bethesda.

Are you sure? Two print magazines have already done their reviews.

Yea, I saw those, odds are it was a release candidate. The pirated version looks like the final version. I've reviewed release candidates on f13 and found some strange shit, those don't get leaked often for good reason.

Fair enough. Now I play the waiting game.

I'm sure we'll get to listen to WUA complain about how much it sucks as he plays it 12+ hours a day for the next three weeks.

I'm excited for the game, but I'm waiting on reviews from people here first.  Oblivion ran like dogshit on my old computer, so I upgraded my system.  The first game I installed on the new rig was Oblivion and I've still never played past the first hour because it crashed all the damn time.  Their engine seems to suck monkey balls.  I'm not going to spend the hours of time getting Fallout to work that I spent on Oblivion.

Do you not have a 360? (Serious question, not implying you should have one.)

stop all the downloadin'

help computah

Is anyone else but me laughing that it wasn't even the PC version?

You know, the platform not even worth developing on anymore because of piracy?

Heh, anyone even know someone with a modded 360?

Edit: For what it's worth, I'll likely be purchasing the 360 or PS3 version unless there's early indication that one of the versions is flawed.  I don't have much faith in Bethesda creating something runnable on my decent PC, even if it isn't overly graphically impressive.  Shame too, because I try to avoid anything FPSish on a console.  Although the controls/UI are likely to have some heavy consolitis.    :|

Yeah, I know a couple, but I don't keep in touch with them anymore. If I remember correctly, there are a few people here who own one.

There's a link to this on the Bethsoft main page but the server is down currently. I got this from the interminable QT3 Fallout thread.

Looks like I still have no excuse to buy a new PC. Sigh.

I'm think I'm the resident "Pirate" when it comes to 360 games. Despite it really being my roomie who does it all, but I take part.

First Impressions:

• Post apocalyptic Oblivion
• Controls take some getting used to, but overall they're well laid out
• Awesome tutorial/intro to the game
• Huge draw distance really emphasizes that you're in a post apocalyptic wasteland
• Normal shooting doesn't feel hindered by the obvious RPG % to hit number crunching going on
• Flip side, VATS is a weird beast. Sometimes it feels necessary to survive close combat situations
• Oblivion weirdness still present: NPC Pathing, weird reactions..etc.
• Third person is hideous
• Clothing combination's are pretty funny (Fedora + lab coat and sunglasses  :awesome_for_real:)

Anything anyone wants to know?

Edit: I can't spell.

Voice acting quality? Discerbable impact of stats in combat and non-combat situations?

I haven't really noticed the Oblivion style repetitive NPC voice syndrome.. yet. Having Liam Neeson voice your father is all kinds of awesome too. The stats are really hard to tell with, so far the perks and skills have made a difference, but stats are something you'd have to be comparing to notice.

PORKCHOP SANDWICHES?!

Just don't post any spoilers please.

I've been very careful to avoid them so far...

I'm making sure to keep story, characters and such out. Don't worry, I won't ruins it for anyone.

Nope, sadly a librarian's salary is meager at best.  I build a high-end PC every other year, that's about it.  It plays about 80% of the stuff I want to play, so I can't complain too much. 

I couldn't talk the wife into getting me a xbox or ps3 for my b-day back in february, but she got enough together for a Wii... fun for a few months but collecting dust.  I'd sell it if not for my daughter who dabbles with it. 

Anyways - can't wait to hear how you guys have it running.!

Without spoilers, is the story good?

So, do you feel this game would play better on a PC or are the console controls/UI sufficient?

To be honest, it's meh so far, but I got sidetracked for about, oh, 3 hours today doing side mission stuff. I'm assuming I've only scratched the surface of the story. I'm determined to just do the story side of it now, so I'll post again tomorrow after I've put a dent into it the main missions/storyline.

Huge toss up on this. There are times when I feel a mouse and keyboard would be really helpful, especially with the "hotkey" items, which are unfortunately placed on the D-Pad. I'm curious to see how VATS works in the PC version too. That could seriously persuade me to switch from 360 to PC.

For anyone who has played Oblivion and plans to play this, you will have a moment where you realize it's almost exactly like Oblivion, but in a post-apocalyptic setting.

I think I saw one russian did a playthrough and some of the lines are really really horrid.

Here's a sample
"Steel be with you"

Yeah, I had to talk to that npc twice to make sure that's what he said. Some dialogue is very.. out of place. Like a character will talk fine for about 4-5 selections and then they start swearing up a storm. :uhrr:

Stop saying stuff like this, please.

I so want this game to turn out good.

It's not in a bad way. There are some assets they put into Oblivion that they just moved over to Fallout, like the random dungeons. They're just a bit less obvious in Fallout.

oh and that russian guy play stream was taken down but i saw hilarity stuff.
here's the basic scene:

Bethesda games have always been a little better filling in the "gaps" with imagination. :oh_i_see:

Oblivion :(

Fuck.

YOU SEE WHAT YOU DID? YOU SEE WHAT YOU DID?

Bethesda has been making the same game for the last decade plus. Daggerrfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, etc. Shouldn't be a surprise that Fallout 3 is a reskinned Oblivion.

I doubt it means much, but I'm enjoying Fallout and playing it a hell of a lot more than I did Oblivion.

Why ?

(serious question, gie it some thought !)

This game is Oblivion from the moment you get control of your character.

Third person is laughably bad. We're talking b-rate movie bad. Your character just floats through the world. Fucking lulzville.

I'm pretty upset about this game atm.

You're upsetting me by proxy.

 :ye_gods:

So third person is bad. We knew this.
So some NPC interation is  :awesome_for_real:. Again, not shocking.

What are the reasons that the game is no good that we actually care about? So far I'm not seeing anything about that.

I don't understand the people who get all pissed off about it not being "Fallout" enough.

If it is fun, play it. If not, don't.

Pros:
The world is gorgeous. Just outstanding. A little dark on my TV, but we'll see how it fares when I get the PC version.
Armor and weapon design >>> Oblivion
Sound is fantastic.
Missions are Fallout-y. Sort of. I don't want to spoil anything since most people will play it even if it had a metascore of 10/100.

Cons:
Characters still ugly, Bethsoft sucks at this. Just not as bad as Oblivion.
Missions are Oblivion-y also.
Too much useless shit in the world. Feels sily, next-gen pixel hunting even.
Voices are mostly meh.
Intro is just stupid.

Oh, right, VATS.

Fun, but totally lulzworthy.

Also, I don't hate it, I'll play through the whole thing extensively on the PC version. It's simply not Fallout and I'm not going to pretend it is. It's not quite Oblivion either. It's the unholy child of both.

Do you mean there is too much clutter on the ground? Or do you mean it is a pain in the ass to search for items?

Or both I suppose.

The latter, unfortunately. And the GUI is unresponsive and poopy (on the 360 version).

Bleh. I'm sure this will be addressed on the PC version via mods, but why couldn't they light shit up that you NEED to find for quests ala Bioshock?

I'll do a brief run-down and expand on what Schild said, so you get why it's "lulzworthy":

The story is generally picking up. They're giving you a reason to discover the world and a lot of side-quests are hinting to there being a lot in the wasteland that you're not aware of at the moment. Overall, the settings fits a lot better with the engine, so I find it more playable than Oblivion. The removal of the annoying gates is a plus and the fact that there's more going on in the way of factions fighting and people trying to survive.


I'll agree to everything on that list and add a couple points.

- Random outposts/warehouses seem to have had more thought put into them than the random dungeons in Oblivion. Sometimes even painting a picture of the past that helps you understand the world.

- Male/Female characters play very differently. I decided I didn't want to play a good character, so restarted with a bad female and didn't realize how much I would lose and gain from it opposed to playing a male.


- Characters are definitely ugly, but at least they improved the hair! :awesome_for_real: Some characters just look downright awful.

- Some missions wreak of oblivion, like the random escort side quests. If anyone hated them in Oblivion, you'll hate them just as much when a almost everyone has a ranged attack.

- The useless shit is VERY annoying at times when you're trying to pick stuff up. PC will be a lot better for this because thumbsticks are ass when you're trying to pick up a tiny bottlecap.

- Voices are hit or miss. Especially the sound level of some peoples voices. Sometimes I can stand in-between a conversation and hear it and other times I have to stare at one persons face to get the right amount of sound in the surround sound.

- The only point I disagree with. It's a unique intro for the most part and I enjoyed it. Now, multiple times through? Yeah, it would get annoying.

There may be no mod capability to this game. Part of the reason why I'm very very worried. But who cares, Dogmeat Armour mod for $2 imo.

I played through Fallout and Fallout 2 a whole lot recently. The rose coloured glasses are definitely off in that regard. So I don't really mind if it's not 'Fallout-y', just so long as it's fun for what it is.

Well, if you go into it calling it something like "OMG WAR" or somewthing, it would be awesome.

As Fallout, as I told a few other people, well, it's fucking not Fallout. And thus, 3 years on the license have been wasted.

I'm going to keep playing it because I do like it for what it is, but I'm a victim of caring about the franchise, whoops.

Not to be picky, but there were no random dungeons in Oblivion. They may have appeared that way since they were designed using prebuilt "tiles", so you did tend to see a lot of repetition, but I can assure you, they were not random the way Daggerfall ones were.

Going to full 3D and mostly first-person was the bad idea here, IMO.

That kinda kills the Fallout-yness right away.

Yeah, sorry, was referring to the repetitiveness.

Alright, I've played Fallout 3 enough to write an article. That said, the article is going to be about never calling it Fallout 3 again. I will henceforth refer to the game as Trashland.

:crying_panda:

Damn you Bethesda!

Oh, I also want to say that the writing is about HALF as good as the other games. It feels like they were trying too hard but didn't have the writers to pull it off. :(

Oh, and can't wait for the PC version with quicksave, I hate falling to my death and being set back an hour.

Heh.

For all of you who are angry all Fallout 3 and stuff I have one thing to say:

NOW YOU HERPES SORE  DISCHARGE RIDDEN CUMSOCKS KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT REAL TIME COMBAT SYSTEMS IN EVERY (Non Action) RPG SINCE BALDUR'S GATE.

SUCK IT DOWN AND BE A MAN YOU NINNIES!

 :awesome_for_real:

It sounds like the problem isn't that the combat is 'real time', it sounds like the problem is that it is a particular flavor of it that sucks.

so

Guy on Gametrailers interview said this (from Bethsoft):
"No matter how compelling we make our story, a big vista landscape is more compelling and with Fallout it's kind of the same"

And now you know every single fucking problem with Bethesda titles. SIGH.

Nope, you're still crazy and you don't get it.

CONSOLED  :heartbreak:

Sounds more like BethSoft'd. I'll still likely buy it.  Oblivion entertained me enough that I finished it.

No! NO NO NO NO NO!

This was NOT consoled. This was, as Rasix pointed out, Bethsoft'd. Overall, they were too damn lazy to build an engine around the game, instead they built Fallout around the Oblivion engine.

Argh! I'm officially not buying Fallout3 at release now. I hope you guys are happy with yourselves.

I will probably buy it eventually. Probably. But it was a must buy until now.

Horse fuckers. Did they at least manage an interesting story? I don't think I can force myself to play an Oblivion clone, but maybe, maybe if the story is really rad.

What the fuck were all you guys expecting? Had you not heard, ages ago, that it was based on the Oblivion engine?

I'm still looking forward to it just as much as I was before. I don't understand how some of you have switched from irrational hope to irrational angst so quickly.

This. How you people can continue to build games up so much in your minds, that there is no way they will live up to your expectations pretty much every single time baffles me.

I don't mind the Oblivion Engine;  if they build a decent RPG (hell, even if it deviates from Fallout) around it, I'd be happy.

Instead, it sounds like they just remade Oblivion with guns.

I don't mind the Oblivion Engine :  I mind Oblivion.

Most Boring RPG Ever.  And you're talking to someone who is an absolute luv freak for Morrowind, Arena, Daggerfall and the rest.  I spent YEARS in Daggerfall.  Christ, I should have had a fucking Daggerfall passport !


Edited >>  I Agree With the Dalek.

Well, I for one am disappointed Fallout 3 is exactly what I expected it would be.  Bethesda fucking sucks.  I'm pretty pissed they screwed up a sequel to what is one of my favorite games.

And this is based off playing it? Or just more hyperbole based off a few comments others have played in their first few moments with a leaked copy?

I watched a friend play it all night last night while I played CoTN, from 7pm to about 10am.  So, while I didn't play it, watching was enough to know I want no part.

I'm sure they'll blame the low sales on all the dirty pirates instead of their own poor writing.

low sales?

lol this game will sell like fire and since it's basically just a reskin and some mods, well, I can't see it having cost all that much.

Man, you all got NMA in my f13.  :ye_gods:

What, that's not why you read f13? It's  :awesome_for_real:

Hope is a strange animal, good sir.  Hope.

Remember: all the people who said that Fallout could never be 3D went out and bought it anyway, because it was called Fallout.

They can put it next to Fallout: Tactics. And Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel.

And they'll leave a space for Fallout: Online :why_so_serious:

I still don't understand the god damn hatred for Fallout: Tactics I see thrown around these boards.  I actually really enjoyed it, and it WAS exactly like the other games.  Only difference was that instead of an RPG, it became a Turn Based Tactical Strategy Game, where I had multiple guys killing shit instead of one.

This. FO:T was pure win.

I thought FO:T was awful. The real-time combat was a mess but the maps were too big to play turn-based.

I loved FO:T, in fact I just played through it again last week (mostly because it's playable 1-handed and is turn-based so it fits my pain management atm).

The maps were only too large because of the stupid restriction on the mini-map zoom. When I first played it I would play each new map through on CTB first off and then, once I knew the map, play it on proper turn-based with my own mental mini-map :)

If anyone in Canada is looking to get it, dell's selling it for $10 off each version retail so the PC version is $39.99 before taxes (+ free shipping)

http://www1.ca.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/days_of_deals?c=ca&cs=cadhs1&l=en&s=dhs&ref=homepg

I liked Fallout Tactics. Yeah, the maps took forever to play in turn-based mode, but that was the entire reason I was playing it at all, so I didn't really mind.

I found it was always easy enough to do recon and troop movement in real time, but I fought almost every battle in turn based.  Wish the game was a bit less buggy, CTD problems became rampant in some areas of the game.  Certain save games could get corrupted. 

Game had loads of other issues, but it was just a blast to play. Squad based Fallout combat with full control == :heart:

Hm, I didn't consider the possibility that some people were doing the parts where there was no fighting in turn-based. Yeah you'd have to be nuts to do that.

I should have this tomorrow and will have it all weekend to play. Impressions on Monday.

Thanks for the link. "Usually Ships: Pre Order" is kind of worrisome but...not really.