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Fallout 3

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SwiftSpear
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Re: Fallout 3

Post by SwiftSpear »

smoth wrote:I figured fallouts' vacs was added because most rpgers are not twitch gamers.
Mmmm, perhaps. I still think bullet time would have fit much better, and would have been much easier to integrate into a leveling stats system. This "you have the option of using vacs or not" thing really worries me. It seems like the kind of thing that has the potential to utterly rape any semblance of a logical difficulty curve.
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Argh
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Re: Fallout 3

Post by Argh »

From what I've read about the XBox version thus far, Fallout 3's pretty underwhelming, unless you thought Oblivion was awesome.

If you did... please, just skip my opinion, you'll want to set me on fire afterwards, because I thought Oblivion was the most beautiful work of human art that I didn't want to actually play, ever.

From what I've heard... the world's small, you can't kill children, you can't customize your character's sex, you can't have sex with people for money... it's Oblivion with Fallout-ish art.

You can kill people in really gross ways. Great, we're right back to the "deepness" and "richness" of the violence of, say, Quake. Groin-shot ftw.

But where's the real moral depth? If it's like Oblivion enough... meh... it'll be a game where the path of sociopathic Evil is the optimax route (oh, that, and only leveling the one time it's mandatory).

Moreover... there is no real reason why, in this day and age, that they couldn't have made an isometric tactical game, turn-based or freeze-time or timer-based- all of these things have been done, and done well, and sold well, and we're not talking the deep depths of Gaming Past, either. The whole reasoning behind that decision alone was completely suspect from the beginning- why not have an engine that can deliver the experience of fighting 20 different mobs with your semi-automated 4-person crew of doom, and use the fact that you can't change camera angles to create massively beautiful environments at game rez?

I mean... it's not like this is something that hasn't been done, profitably, in the last couple of years.

Instead, from what I've read thus far... they gave us a "shooter" that's really just a dice game with crappy control structures, slow gameplay, and characters that are so "next-gen" that you never have large battles, or battles where range really matters a lot.

The AI's pretty dumb, too, from what I've read- like Oblivion, if you pick the right weapons, you can snipe the AI from a distance and never trigger it. And, like Oblivion, from what I've heard, the HTH system is a very bad joke. They apparently didn't learn anything from Fable III, which is sad.

Now, before everybody bitches about what a hater I am... look.

I'm a huge Fallout fan. I am probably the biggest genuine fan of that game here. Seriously.

I have Fallout II on my computer right now, and I suspect I'm the only person here who can honestly say that. It's on here, along with the short list of games that I am willing to ever play again.

I've played most of the major mods for it. I've seen the damn whale a billion times. I've carved my initials with the infamous Red Ryder into the skulls of hundreds of evil stormtroopers of the New World Order, and have carved up VP Duck in various hilarious ways.

The only surprise I ever got from reading a walkthrough was the hint that I should maybe use Super Stimpacks to assassinate people, because it doesn't count as an attack, which seemed like a punk-ass trick, when I could just play games with doors and kill everydamnbody on that floor (which is a reference that you only get if you're a serious fan).

I've even exchanged some email recently with Mark Morgan, the composer for the games, because I wanted to give him props and tell him how damn hard it's been trying to find musicians who channel his wavelength and deliver music that's that cool, because when I went looking for music for P.U.R.E., that's what I was looking for.

I am one of those legions of folks who was like, "hey, go for it, but don't screw it up", when I heard Bethsoft got the IP... and I drooled when I saw the concept work.

But thus far, I'm pretty unimpressed with what I'm hearing on the street. I'll probably wait a bit before deciding whether to buy it... or just pass it up, like I did with that horrible abomination, Tactics.

I'm a fan, dammit. I don't have some ridiculous Special Edition with Extra Bling, or whatever, but I am one of the people out there who really loved the first two games.

And so far as I can tell... the serious fans were the last people Bethsoft wanted to hear from, during the entire goddamn production of this thing, and judging from the conversations they ruthlessly suppress in their Forum, they're deaf, dumb and blind to anything they don't want to hear.

Maybe they'll have an attack of reason by the time they get it to PC. Probably not. Maybe some enterprising modder will fix it up, if Bethsoft ever delivers a way to mod it, which, the last time I checked, was still up in the air.

But thus far, it looks like a game where you have awesome graphics, that look vaguely right... and the soul of the damn thing is a hollow thing. Fallout wasn't just a game design. SPECIAL wasn't really all that, well, special, frankly, and un-modded, it had a lot of serious flaws. The combat system wasn't really new- there had been tactical combat games with those features for quite awhile, and some games have done it better (the Front Mission series, for example).

IOW, it wasn't the core game mechanics. It's what the crew did with those basic building blocks. If Fallout is a monument to anything... it's a monument to level design. Not engine design or game design.

That extreme emphasis on the areas, and the amount of interactivity in them... was a way of thinking about what a RPG is actually about that was pretty darn new- other games had conversation trees, don't get me wrong, that's as old as MUD logic, but the whole felt really tight- you rarely felt like you were FedEx-treadmilling, and if you just wanted to ignore all of it, go straight to San Fran and win... that was an option. DRB did that once, with a guy who just did kung fu, no less.

It was the first RPG that didn't suck and was almost entirely non-linear, had a lot of really deep moral choices... and while its graphics are aging and decrepit at this point, and the interface feels funky compared to the smarter UIs of this day and age, it is one of my Top Ten, and I have yet to see a RPG get anywhere near it, other than Final Fantasy 7... and I've played a lot of them.

At any rate, flame if ya wanna. I know many of you probably loved Oblivion, and so did one of my friends- it's cool, I know that some people just don't like a hardcore RPG where you actually have to think a lot about combat, and where choices you make can actually end whole plot-trees... and where if your luck was bad, you just died, no matter what. If you don't like that... hey, it's cool... but that's what I actually did like about Fallout. Fallout was a very, very hardcore game, in its way, and quite difficult if you weren't willing to think about stuff and do a lot of twinkie, tac-gamer crap. But it was a classic, and that's what I think about what I'm reading about it online... and thus far, I think I'm just going to steel myself for disappointment, because it sounds like Bioshock, with the actual twitch-skill removed.
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[TS]Lollocide
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Re: Fallout 3

Post by [TS]Lollocide »

I really don't understand why people bitched out Tactics.

I mean personally, it wasn't a Fallout game to me at all, but instead it was a nice reminder of the existance of the Fallout universe, the story was alright I guess, it was far too linear but I wasn't expecting FF3 from it, just another Fallout based distraction until they finished the third.

Also, I think FF3 from Beth is gunna be an Oblivion clone, which is why I don't have much hope.
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SwiftSpear
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Re: Fallout 3

Post by SwiftSpear »

[TS]Lollocide wrote:I really don't understand why people bitched out Tactics.

I mean personally, it wasn't a Fallout game to me at all, but instead it was a nice reminder of the existance of the Fallout universe, the story was alright I guess, it was far too linear but I wasn't expecting FF3 from it, just another Fallout based distraction until they finished the third.

Also, I think FF3 from Beth is gunna be an Oblivion clone, which is why I don't have much hope.
Tactics was incredibly fun. Not a fraction of the story depth of a real fallout game, but it made the somewhat creeky fallout combat system work just SO brilliantly in real time. It was the best tactical combat game I've ever played.
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Erom
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Re: Fallout 3

Post by Erom »

Argh wrote:Fallout was a very, very hardcore game, in its way, and quite difficult if you weren't willing to think about stuff and do a lot of twinkie, tac-gamer crap.
I'd hardly call "pick up a gun and use it to shoot people" twinkie, and that's really all you had to do to beat either of the first two Fallouts. To be fair, there were hard fights in F1 and F2 - one in each game. In F1, when you have to kill the first deathclaw, and in F2, when you have to kill the golden gecko. Both difficult because they were early in the game when you had shitty guns. That's one of the reasons I liked Tactics best - the combat was actually though provoking, not monotonous.
Argh wrote:If Fallout is a monument to anything... it's a monument to level design.
While I mostly aggree with this, there was nothing as annoying as spawning with the damn car in an area where it took three hours to figure out a damn way to drive the car to the edge of the map. That was obnoxious in the worst way.

Tactics was probably the third most popular multiplayer game with my crowd in college, after Starcraft and Red Alert 2.
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Argh
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Re: Fallout 3

Post by Argh »

I'd hardly call "pick up a gun and use it to shoot people" twinkie, and that's really all you had to do to beat either of the first two Fallouts. To be fair, there were hard fights in F1 and F2 - one in each game. In F1, when you have to kill the first deathclaw, and in F2, when you have to kill the golden gecko.
That largely depended on how fast you were trying to get through the game. Trust me, if you wanted to do minimal leveling and go straight to San Fran, you had to do some silly stuff. I've read about people beating the game without leveling- sounded painful ;)

As for both encounters, they're really quite easy, if you know what you're doing. The only Golden you have to fight, if you're low level, is the one near the still, and you can attack then run then attack until it drops- there's plenty of ammo available, and I always did the Rat God quest first anyhow, easier XP and you pick up a decent pistol. The other ones you can just run away from, if you put enough points into the appropriate skills.

Same thing with some of the harder encounters later, like the fight with the hidden merc base in 2, where you can totally game the AI if you're willing to dance a bit and picked up the right helpers.

First time through, though, most players just get eaten, which is a major part of the charm of the thing, imo- teaching players that discretion is the better part of valor is a great thing, and something that most RPGs shy away from :-)

At any rate... I'm not saying that Tactics was terrible- a lot of people liked it, but there have been far greater games in that vein. But it wasn't really Fallout, either.
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[TS]Lollocide
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Re: Fallout 3

Post by [TS]Lollocide »

Erom wrote:That's one of the reasons I liked Tactics best - the combat was actually though provoking, not monotonous.
I dunno about that, I still maintain that my favorite tactic was to surround the bad guys and then pour bullets into/onto/around them until they died of lead poisoning
BaNa
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Re: Fallout 3

Post by BaNa »

I for one welcome our 3 dimensional overlords and the random conversation they spawn.

We didn't really like fallout for its super-awesome openness and the epic super-awesome story set in the most awesomest world ever, no. We liked it for the bling graphics and twitch action.

That said, i liked morrowind, liked oblivion, but I'd still be sad if F3 took over the story structure of those.
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Teutooni
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Re: Fallout 3

Post by Teutooni »

Argh wrote:I have Fallout II on my computer right now, and I suspect I'm the only person here who can honestly say that.
I have Fallout, Fallout 2 AND Fallout Tactics installed. :P

Tactics is an alright game, not an epic win like the originals, but goes to show how strangely addictive the post-nuclear atmosphere coupled with solid tactical combat is. That said, I will propably enjoy F3 solely because of the atmosphere.
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Erom
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Re: Fallout 3

Post by Erom »

Argh wrote:Trust me, if you wanted to do minimal leveling and go straight to San Fran, you had to do some silly stuff.
My favorite was the build for Fallout 1 where you boost your starting HP as far as you can go and pick up some tech skills and then deliberately get captured by the Super Mutants. You could actually survive the interrogation and they would throw you in a cell, which you could escape from. I always found that incredible.

Also, I realize I may have a skewed perspective on how the combat in these games panned out given that I deliberately never picked up any henchmen.
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1v0ry_k1ng
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Re: Fallout 3

Post by 1v0ry_k1ng »

completed fallout 3; very very good game, but too short (completed in under 40 hours- and i took my time and explored the subplots etc), and the end is terrible (and whats worse when you finish the storyline you cant go back to the world and explore, its gg bai.)
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SwiftSpear
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Re: Fallout 3

Post by SwiftSpear »

1v0ry_k1ng wrote:completed fallout 3; very very good game, but too short (completed in under 40 hours- and i took my time and explored the subplots etc), and the end is terrible (and whats worse when you finish the storyline you cant go back to the world and explore, its gg bai.)
You can't go back and explore in any of the fallouts. Not that I consider that a good reason why it's defensible in a current day title.
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Peet
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Re: Fallout 3

Post by Peet »

SwiftSpear wrote:You can't go back and explore in any of the fallouts.
Play through fallout 2 :P
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SwiftSpear
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Re: Fallout 3

Post by SwiftSpear »

Peet wrote:
SwiftSpear wrote:You can't go back and explore in any of the fallouts.
Play through fallout 2 :P
Mmmm... I'm pretty sure the game stopped entirely after the endgame video sequence (which was pretty cool because it was customized based on what missions you had completed, and who you killed/saved). It's been a long time though...

Like I say, I don't really like when games do that anyways.
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TheMightyOne
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Re: Fallout 3

Post by TheMightyOne »

SwiftSpear wrote:
Peet wrote:
SwiftSpear wrote:You can't go back and explore in any of the fallouts.
Play through fallout 2 :P
Mmmm... I'm pretty sure the game stopped entirely after the endgame video sequence (which was pretty cool because it was customized based on what missions you had completed, and who you killed/saved). It's been a long time though...

Like I say, I don't really like when games do that anyways.
nope, after youre out of the enclave base youre beeing asked "Do you want to continue playing?"
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rattle
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Re: Fallout 3

Post by rattle »

From what I've heard... the world's small, you can't kill children, you can't customize your character's sex, you can't have sex with people for money... it's Oblivion with Fallout-ish art.
Thought as much...

Fallout ain't no Fallout if you can't melt a kid with a plasma grenade or marry the guy you've had gay sex with.
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SwiftSpear
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Re: Fallout 3

Post by SwiftSpear »

rattle wrote:
From what I've heard... the world's small, you can't kill children, you can't customize your character's sex, you can't have sex with people for money... it's Oblivion with Fallout-ish art.
Thought as much...

Fallout ain't no Fallout if you can't melt a kid with a plasma grenade or marry the guy you've had gay sex with.
Meh, those things were gimics in the original games. They were fun, but never defining features.
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1v0ry_k1ng
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Re: Fallout 3

Post by 1v0ry_k1ng »

you can have sex with a hooker for 120 bottlecaps iirc
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rattle
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Re: Fallout 3

Post by rattle »

Gay marriage for both genders please... preordered it anyway
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Machiosabre
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Re: Fallout 3

Post by Machiosabre »

can you have sex with those crab mutants?
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