This Is The Fallout 3 Thread

[Ennui]

Mikael, don't post in this thread anymore. This is a thread for people playing through Fallout 3, not for you to continue fighting your whiny fanboy crusade (which it says in the OP). Fallout 3, like it or not, is the "true" sequel, not Van Buren or whatever idea you have in your head of what it should be. Face it and stop acting like a child.

edit: while I'm at it, I'll save you a space in your PM box and just tell you here to shorten your signature to at most 1/2 of its current vertical space on the screen.

 

[knut]

Sloppy/lazy doesn't actually mean much to me without some context comparisons. Put some Vs in there and you'll have something to debate. Right now you're not demonstrating why it's a lazy/sloppy game, you're just eluding in a nebulous fashion. Also on the one hand you say you weren't expecting anything ground breaking, on the other you're punishing it for not being progressive. If you bought it having no expectations how can you then criticise it for meeting those expectations?

I've already pointed out a few times why I find the game to be very badly designed and made. Off the top of my head, the things that bother me the most:

* Oblivion like enemies that aimlessly trot 5 metres in every direction until you stumble across them
* Oblivion like animations - inhuman and souless, rigid and static. I'll say the same for their actual human behaviour and personalities. I didn't care for ANYONE in Fallout. No one made e think ''what a badass'' or ''what a bellend'' - it was just meatbag after meatbag that I eventually had five minutes of funs worth blowing apart with a shotgun.
* Oblivion like environments - a door in the middle of ****ing nowhere that leads into a cave full of again, aimlessly wandering enemies. Doors in the middle of rocks. I am fed up of doors just smack bang in the middle of nowhere that lead to places like Keepers Kavern (note: made up name) or some shit like that.

Whilst maybe not crucial to some - and lets face it, we'll all subjective - these three points which demonstrate the capabilities of characters, enemies and the locations they dwell in are all crucial gameplay mechanics to me. It's not that I can't go around them, it's the fact I've done it before in exactly the same way.

We have a word in art college for the kind of thinking that Bethesda set their minds to when they work; comfort zone. They've marvelled in Oblivions success and then lumped a game right on top of it with ridiculously uncanny similarities. When I say I want progress, it means I want to see something a little different. Different doesn't mean it has to be groundbreaking, it just has to be something that I can't relate to at every single turn with my brain screaming out OH THIS REMINDS ME OF THIS TIME IN BRUMA...

EDIT: I've said all I need to say on the game. I found it fun for a while but then mind-numbingly tedious and annoying. That's my two cents.

 

[Jintor]

I agree with everything Antipop has said.

I managed to shut off my brain for a week and enjoy Fallout 3 but after that the combined Oblivion-ness of it just got fustrating and I had all these other games to play. My friends who never played Oblivion are having a lot more fun.

 

[Kadayi]

Not potentially. It *was* a better game. Not released, but still better in every aspect as an RPG.

If it never shipped it's vapourware. What part of that fact don't you quite get? :dozey:

Does loving role play mean I should bow down to you and proclaim you the God Emperor of RPG Design? No, I don't.

LOL I don't think I ever claimed such a thing, but I am a progressive game enthusiast and I honestly believe from a design perspective (coming from a design background) that it's a healthy thing to re-evaluate the common assumptions that are often made as to what makes an RPG (Stats, Interfaces, levelling, etc).

Sure the computer RPG owes a lot to the old P&P games such as D&D, but ultimately those P&P rule sets were created merely as a means to arrive at an action adjudication in an imaginary space ("do you open the locked safe or not? Roll 2D10 Dice"). With more immersive game spaces and ever more sophisticated AI it would be foolish not to consider how these aspects can enhance and enrich the cRPG experience, if not replace them wholesale. I don't see what's so heinous a crime to ponder and ruminate upon such matters.

You're jumping to conclusions, again. That will get your ass shot off some day and frankly, I'd love to be the one holding the shotgun that day.

Because all that matters is combat mechanics after all no? God forbid someone makes an RPG that doesn't revolve around shooting or stabbling, levelling, endless item acquisition or any of the usual tropes one associates with the entire genre. All fantasy RPG games much feature Grumpy dwarves, nimble elves roadside beggars who turn out to be lost kings etc etc etc. These are the rules and a pox upon anyone who dares question them.

Mindless ranting.

When I say Vs I mean compare a mechanic in one game against one in another (say dialogue exchange in VTM:B vs FO3 as an example). Not merely run down a long list of arbitrary and pernickity complaints.

@Kage

You're hilarious :dozey:

@ Antipop

I'm after critical comparison. Do they not teach you this at your college? It's like Design 101 (if your tutors haven't covered this they need shooting)

For something to be judged inferior it has to be in comparison to something else that exists. If it is judged inferior against an ideal then it's a false judgement.

by comparing the feature sets of different existing systems we can make determinations as to what succeeds and what doesn't Vs the other.

 

[knut]

I wouldn't even know where to begin countering my negatives with Fallout with the positives of some of my other favourite games. After you play something like Half-Life 2/Episodes, it's a little lackluster seeing writers not put their heart and soul into a game and it's characters. After playing many, many other FPS's, it's even more lackluster coming up against boring stupid enemies that run blindly at you and yip and claw at your feet. After playing so many richly unique games like Bioshock and Mass Effect, it's a little lackluster to see such boring and jarring locations placed at random for the sake of a place to level up and grab some loot. My point is that it feels like Oblivion right to the point where Oblivion felt OK because of the time it came out. This feels behind with the times.

But all of that isn't the point - the game just feels bad to me. In my gut, in my heart and in my mind, it just doesn't stand out to me as 'one of those games' that I can sit down with and love every time I start up a new game. Bad to me because it's COPY PASTE of Oblivion. I loved Oblivion but now that I've done it I'll rant about that as much as I would Fallout, but whats worse is that at the end of that ranting a new game by the same studio was released, and it was everything bad all released once again in a new setting and time with the same mechanics.

Maybe it doesn't feel similar to you, but when I pick up the controller, it turns me right off. Horses for courses.

 

[Tagaziel]

If it never shipped it's vapourware. What part of that fact don't you quite get? :dozey:

Examples of good design don't magically disappear if some ****tards decide to cancel the game.

LOL I don't think I ever claimed such a thing, but I am a progressive game enthusiast and I honestly believe from a design perspective (coming from a design background) that it's a healthy thing to re-evaluate the common assumptions that are often made as to what makes an RPG (Stats, Interfaces, levelling, etc).

Reevaluate, yes. Arbitrarily remove? No.

Sure the computer RPG owes a lot to the old P&P games such as D&D, but ultimately those P&P rule sets were created merely as a means to arrive at an action adjudication in an imaginary space ("do you open the locked safe or not? Roll 2D10 Dice"). With more immersive game spaces and ever more sophisticated AI it would be foolish not to consider how these aspects can enhance and enrich the cRPG experience, if not replace them wholesale. I don't see what's so heinous a crime to ponder and ruminate upon such matters.

Using fancy words doesn't make your post any more intelligent.

I'd like to point out that what you are trying to do is take the "role" out of playing game. My skills define my character. My character is a separate entity from me. My character has it's own skills not affected by mine. If he ****s up opening a safe, that means he ****ed up.

In your style game (you used Fo3 as an example) it's me who ****s up. Not my character. Me. The player. Breaking a bobby pin because I lack monkey dexterity kills immersion more than failing to pass a stat check and jamming the lock.

Because all that matters is combat mechanics after all no? God forbid someone makes an RPG that doesn't revolve around shooting or stabbling, levelling, endless item acquisition or any of the usual tropes one associates with the entire genre. All fantasy RPG games much feature Grumpy dwarves, nimble elves roadside beggars who turn out to be lost kings etc etc etc. These are the rules and a pox upon anyone who dares question them.

Don't forget that I completely and utterly hate Planescape: Torment. Oh my, how horrible a game it is that I wasted countless hours just reading through the beautifully crafted dialogue. Oh my.

As I said, your ass will get shot off someday.

When I say Vs I mean compare a mechanic in one game against one in another (say dialogue exchange in VTM:B vs FO3 as an example). Not merely run down a long list of arbitrary and pernickity complaints.

I've compared choices & consequences in Van Buren (but could have substituted any from previous titles) and asked you to provide a single example of such extensive C&C in the entire Fo3. Please, do it.

I'm after critical comparison. Do they not teach you this at your college? It's like Design 101 (if your tutors haven't covered this they need shooting)

For something to be judged inferior it has to be in comparison to something else that exists. If it is judged inferior against an ideal then it's a false judgement.

by comparing the feature sets of different existing systems we can make determinations as to what succeeds and what doesn't Vs the other.

As such, I'm comparing Fallout 3 to it's predecessors and other role playing games. I'm merely holding it up to the same scrutiny I do other RPGs.

@ Ennui:

Let people with a clue as to what they're talking about decide what's a true sequel, ok?

 

[Kadayi]

But comparing an RPG such as FO3 against an FPS like Halflife 2 is an unfair comparison. Firstly on a combat level they have completely separate mechanics (Twitch Vs point determination), secondly the games are of significantly different length. Thirdly the number of characters in FO3 is much higher than in HL2. Sure it would be wonderful if FO3 featured characters as detailed as Alyx, but clearly right now that's not possible.

But instead say compare it to another recentish RPGs from different developers, such as Mass Effect or VTM:B.

 

[Ennui]

Next time the ban isn't going to expire after 10 days.