7 days to Fallout3 info

No one ever claimed it did. FO's world isn't a post-apocalyptic version of the 1950s, it's a post-apocalyptic version of the future as people might have imagined it back in the 1950s, i.e. a sci-fi versions of 1950s technology. On top of that, we have the dominant post-apocalytic element, which is fairly generic.

It doesn't match the supposed style but it matches the actual style? Huh? You're not making a whole hell of a lot of sense here.

Point is: it not only matches the style, it sets the mood and the tone of the game world. The nice ambient music is a rather large contributing factor, much more so than in many other games. Bethesda, on the other hand, serves us blasting trumpets and forbiding orchestral strings, essentially yet another iteration of Jeremy Soule's mind-numbingly generic paint-by-the-numbers fantasy soundtrack stylings. They just don't get it.

Yes, the Vault Dweller's jumpsuit is one element of the 1950s sci-fi thing bleeding into the post-apocalyptic setting. That is, btw, why Fallout fans have noticed (and don't like) the fact that Bethesda has changed the style of the vault suit to something that looks 1990ish. It's not because of some sort of dogmatic stance that everything in FO3 has to be an exact replica of the original FO, it's because it's another piece of evidence for the fact that Bethesda just doesn't get it. You're absolutely right that FO's post-apocalyptic scenario is rather generic. What makes it different are precisely the 1950s retro sci-fi elements.

There's more to Fallout's style. Frankly, I find myself more and more in the camp of those who believe that the visual style of Fallout is closely tied to the isometric perspective and cannot be properly translated into first-person view. I don't really understand why it it neccessary to replace the isometric view with first person view. Even if you disagree with that, there are some elements that are also important to Fallout's style other than the whole 1950s thing.

One of the is the Wasteland. Gradually uncovering locations/settlements and overland travel. While not particularly important in terms of gameplay it conveyed a sense of geography and size to the player. It also established the post-apocalyptic world as a world of scattered pockets of civilization surrounded by a harsh wasteland. And FO3 does away with that and replaces it with sewer crawling. That's at least what the article seems to suggest.

Funny, it get an entirely different impression. The trailer is ok, I guess, but the in-game pics in that article remind me more of a generic survival horror game, except for the vault one.

Going from a wasteland setting to a gritty urban ruins setting doesn't work for me either and it is a major breach with the original style.

I agree, they did a pretty good job on the vault. A bit too dark, like the interior of a submarine or something, but the stuff there seems to be a faithful recreation of the original artwork style.

Yes, the Super Mutant looks like an Orc with radiation burns. Horrible. The original Super Mutants are highly intelligent and look remotely reminiscent of Frankenstein's monster, who happened to be a popular movie and comic book character throughout the 1940s/50s. Why change them into Generic_Monster_Aaargh_07? Let's be honest here, the Super Mutant and the Behemoth lack style and character, they could have been taken from any game... Doom 3, Wolfenstein, Resident Evil, whatever.

That's a retarded and arrogant mindset, as it assumes that if the original FO devs made FO today, they would have opted to make a Bethesda-style game. And yes, that's probably what they have been deluding themselves into believing. A Beth dev pretty much expressed that sentiment exactly.

Where, by the way, did that myth come from that real-time combat and first-person view is the modern, progressive and better thing to do? Isometric vs. first-person is simply a matter of taste and I have yet to see a real-time RPG combat system outside action-RPGs like Diablo that was actually any good.

FO's original devs could have easily made a real-time combat RPG with first person view. These have been around much longer than Fallout. Ultima Underworld springs to mind, which was released 5 years before Fallout (and it was a much better game than anything Bethesda has ever produced). Yet, they opted NOT to go that route and that should tell us something.

First-person and real-time isn't the better or more contemporate approach to CRPGs, it's the approach to CRPGs that is better suited for consoles and that's the simple truth of it.

By the way, Bethesda's fan community woes predate Fallout 3. They pissed off the original TES fan community, they screwed over the Star Trek game community and their dealings with the Fallout community so far haven't evolved past the typical stone-walling and the blacklisting of critical sites that we have come to expect from them.

If you want to know how Bethesda is dealing with fan communities, you should read this.

BIS and MicroForte (the devs of Fallout Tactics), on the other hand, always maintained strong ties and open communications with the FO fan community and that's something that this particular community has gotten used to. Bethesda, on the other hand, is all about PR bullshit and media-hype, if not outright deceit and lies.

Enough with the NMA bashing already. If it wasn't for fan communities like NMA and DaC that have been keeping the flame alive for the past decade, the Fallout franchise wouldn't be worth a damn. Without the fan community, the franchise would have died with the cancellation of Van Buren and the release of FO:BOS. I find it interesting that idiots like Tycho have turned to bashing the very fans that truly care about and are commited to the Fallout legacy.

The Fallout community is constantly mischaracterized by Bethesda propaganda, as well as hack writers like Tycho, as a bunch of crazed, bitter and irrational dogmatists who won't accept anything that isn't a 1:1 carbon copy of the original. In reality, all they want is a good RPG that remains true to the virtues of the original games, carefully maintains the setting and doesn't rape the established game world lore. Yes, the community has become bitter over the years but that's merely an expression of their loyality and devotion.

The community at NMA (as well as Duck and Cover) was largely supportive of Van Buren and even Fallout: Tactics. The community didn't even reject Tactics outright, the game simply fell short of expectations. Most Fallout fans actually didn't mind the idea of a JA-style tactical combat game based on Fallout. Sure, they would have prefered a true FO3 but the attitude of the fan community towards Tactics was predominantly supportive. Most fans were happy that the franchise was still alive. Micro Forté maintained an intensive and constructive dialogue with the FO fan community throughout the game's developement.

FO:T turned out to be a major disappointment, partly because it did a crap job at implementing the Fallout setting, partly because it kinda was a game no one really wanted. Also, MicroForte's focus on "fixing" turn-based combat by making it some sort of RT/TB hybrid they referred to as "continuous turn based mode", didn't really work out all that well. CTB sucked, maybe not in concept but in implementation, and since the game was balanced for CTB, the optional traditional turn-based mode had severe balancing problems.

Ultimately, FO:T turned out to be a game that could neither satisfy FO fans nor the fans of tactical combat games. It was simply too damn average and critically flawed in many ways. Many fans had hoped that supporting Tactics and making it a success would help kickstarting the developement of a true Fallout successor.

Instead, Interplay announced Tactics 2, which they canned after it became clear that Tactics had failed commercially and after Fallout fan community became much more vocal about not wanting another sub-par spin-off but a real FO3.

So with Tactics 2 cancelled, what did Interplay do? They announced a glorified Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance mod called Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel for the mentally challenged console gamer crowd. FOBOS not only raped the existing game lore hardcore, it further insulted Fallout fans by reducing the the Fallout setting to "hot babes in thongs blast super mutants with big guns". FOBOS was a juvenile, borderline-retarded action game targeted at 14-year-old console kiddies and it proved to be the final nail in Interplay's coffin (less than 20k units sold).

Regarding Van Buren, yes, there was a lot of initial scepticism within the community. Who can blame them after Tactics and FO:BOS? After having watched Interplay rape the Fallout franchise for years? Many feared that Van Buren was little more than vaporware, like the recently canceled TORN and Project Jefferson (BG3). After the FO:T letdown, the community was done with cutting the developers some slack. Van Buren had to fight for acceptance, and the developers (like JE Sawyer) did successfully so - by communicating with the fans.

Sure, the community was extremely critical about the Van Buren's real-time combat, mainly because it didn't work in Tactics and it didn't work in games like Arcanum, either. FO:T real-time combat was in many ways just broken ("knockdown ftw"), Arcanum combat was painful to play (seriously, I replayed the game recently, combat is far, far worse than in NWN2 even). And to top it off, ToEE was released around that time with a kick-ass turn-based combat system, proving that TB is inherently superior.

That being said, Van Buren was never denied a fair chance, it was never just discounted. It was criticized harshly but that has to be seen in the context of a fanbase that really wanted this game, and wanted it to be as good as it can be. The outcry Van Buren's cancellation caused among Fallout fans is evidence for that.

It's nonsense that the Fallout fanbase would have rejected Van Buren no matter what. It's also nonsense that the Fallout fanbase rejects Bethesda's FO3 because it's NOT Van Buren.

Bethesda simply never even tried to win the support of the Fallout fanbase because

1) they know that their game won't satisfy serious CRPG gamers in general and Fallout fans in particular, because they make consolitis-infested pseudo-RPGs that suck

2) they don't need the Fallout fanbase to sell millions of units to console gamers who wouldn't know a good RPG if it hit them over the head with a 40 pound sledgehammer.

3) they have a well-oiled hype-machine of clueless game journalists to counter any negative buzz from the Fallout fanase

4) they don't care about fan opinions anyway (e.g. they're still stubbornly maintaining that there is nothing wrong with Oblivion)

The problem has never been the Fallout fanbase at NMA or DAC or the Codex... the problem has been Interplay in the past and now Bethesda's ineptitude at fan community relations as well as their abysmal recent track record of horrendously dumbed down console action games posing as RPGs.

 

More information. . This game might just let me go back to the good ole' pc gaming days.

 

I'd like to think they learned some things from Oblivion. I'm just trying to keep an open mind.

 

Please tell me how you could make an isometric, turn-based game and expect it to sell on Xbox 360. The problem isn't Bethesda, it's the same problem that's been around since Deus Ex 2.

 

"No level-scaling is also an awesome news. The art and atmosphere are right on the mark."

That is a quote from a community comment regarding the article (which I didn't see since apparently it is copyrighted material).

Thank God no level-scaling. I'm not going to rehash the Oblivion comments, but that is also the one aspect of Oblivion that I did not like (and the one with the most mods to remove that aspect!!). It sounds as though there was a lot to like about it.

I look forward to seeing more about it.

As far as a game released in 2008 with a Static, Isometric perspective...no. Titan Quest is the last thing I can remember being released like that, and it seemed dated despite having really good graphics (and buggy as an ant farm at a flea circus, but I digress). It desperately could have used a full 3D camera.

Third person, done correctly, is wonderful, and there is no reason to go back to a static view. A well implemented 3D camera can be totally (and smoothly) rotated and even zoomed out to isometric if you just *have* to play it that way. I don't get the gripe about allowing people to enjoy "modern conveniences". If you want to play Isometric, then just zoom it on out and set it to a 45 deg angle, but for heaven's sake I have a high end graphics card and I'd like to use it if I can. I played every IE game, and the Diablos and got along fine, but I was overjoyed to be able to zoom at least zoom in Titan Quest (Ooo, how modern!) and Sacred and then finally, thrilled to actually rotate it in NWN and Dungeon Siege (which is older than all except the Diablos and the IE games).

Well heck, I loved the KOTORs. If you believe you can't have great RP gaming without an isometric camera, run don't walk to your local store and pick up those. You might discover that you even like using such new techniques as "3D" in your RPG

 

You know that`s not the issue here. Those of us that are less than impressed, even with the apparent greatness that oozes from that article, aren`t so because it`s not isometric...I think that if someone like Bioware or, heck, even Obsidian(not to mention Troika) were to make it, a lot of slack would`ve been cut. Why?Because you know that they value atmosphere, that they can create an enthralling story...that they`d actually get it. Beth OTOH are mainly hype, consoles, shalowness, flashiness. That is unappealing to many(and I think to you too, based on your gaming choices). Do I want this to be great, be it first/third/whatever person?Hell yes, but as I`ve stated repeatedly, I simply don`t think Beth have what it takes to produce anything but mediocre good-looking stuff, aimed at someone who wants to have a refreshing stroll in front of his console/at his desk, without burning too many brain-cells. If they prove me wrong, GREAT!

 

I actually like Fallout Tactics. I've played it more often than Fallout 1 or 2. It might be a Fallout Lite, but it's a great Jagged Alliance 3. And I liked Arcanum as well.

And I like RPGs with guns better than the ones with swords and magic, like ToEE. OK game, but I don't like the setting and the complicated AD&D rules.

You can't please everyone.

 

I read an interview somewhere, and can't dig it up anymore, where someone was lambasting Jeremy Soule and his music tracks. This is relevant (in a way...) to this thread, because he was a Black Isle innovator, in my opinion. I don't think you can mention Black Isle without Fallout being uttered in the same breath, so I'll go off on my little tangent, if you don't mind.

Music tracks lend SOOOO much to games, and a crappy generic one will "kill the mood" quicker than than Paris Hilton's mug shot. Baldur's Gate(s) - much more so the first, though, and Icewind Dale (!!) had great soundtracks. The production quality of most games written under the IE was good, but no better than the artists involved in their fruition. The creative melding of gameplay technical talent, sound expertise, engine tweaking genius and generalized exceeding the limits of what was generally accepted as a "limit" was extraordinary in its' breadth at Black Isle.

Those particular elements came together in Fallout (and in other IE/Iso - perspective games) in such a way as to be a masterpiece, so I can understand how there are people that get extremely nitpicky - you don't nitpick unless the original was so above-bar that it is pretty much a whole new science of thought.

I think about the criticism of IWD, and it makes me question how limited the perception is of that title - because I can fire it up right now, today, and still find things about it that are evolutionary. I think JE Sawyer did a phenomenal job with that masterpiece. That statement takes nothing away from Baldur's Gate, or Planescape:Torment, either - those too were masterpieces with their own character, heritage and mastery.

Is Oblivion anywhere near that level of artistry? Uh...no, and I will tell you that even though I tend to see the beauty it offers rather than the warts. I guess I do relate to the worries that Fallout will fall to the level of "Oblivion with Guns". I kind of question whether HG:L is going to become "D2 with Guns, and charging you for it monthly!". I know many people didn't have the same level of love that I did for the original Icewind Dale, Heart of Winter, and the mini-expansion TotL. Thinking back on my reaction to someone banging on Jeremy Soule's soundtrack for some other game I can't remember though, I understand the defense of genius.

Gaming at a level other than a lowline profit analysis is all too rare these days - there were (maybe could be? or are?) masterpieces that blew away our expectations and took things to an entirely different plane. I guess all of us want that.

 

I'm now firmly ducking under and entrenched

/Bitch Queen's Envoy overhead

So feel free to offer comments as to my summation or Fallout / Bethesda ... er, fallout concerns

P. S. My first exposure to AD&D purists was when my Mother, in defiance of the local Southern Baptist church, bought the Basic edition for Christmas when I was ... er... small. I couldn't interest my sister in playing it, and could find no one at private school that cared until we moved to New Orleans, and I was enrolled in that "Catholic School" and played with a few behind the building during recess. We were terribly young and creative, and used graph paper while coveting our dice. Sadly, I was also the junior chess match winner that same year, along with junior golf club champion...and that pretty much tells more about me, my age, and perspective than you'll ever get in an unauthorized biography.

 

Owning the bethesda army since 1997

Just to reiterate a bit how much Fallout rules (that's the second, F2) here's an amusing thread on the codex about a guy (RK47, check his posts) who made a PG with intelligence 1:

http://www.rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=19377

i never even tried, knew it would change the dialogs, but didn't think it would change them THAT much and even the description of objects in the world..

quick quote, from a screenshot that caused me lols (Description of a computer how the INT1 character sees it):

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m20/r3dknight/Snap61.jpg


"You see a metal box talking to the air in woman's voice. The woman must be inside the box! She must be really, really cramped in there"

he then opens the computer to free the woman but only finds a bunch of dead snakes

Love how the game lets you answer with things like "guh" or "humn"

 

Fallout 1 and 2 were such awesome games... Why did it had to be, of all the companies and all the IPs available in the whole wide world, Bethesda that snaped the Fallout IP.

It would have been much better to let the IP rest in peace, if Troïka/Black Isle folks didn't work on it. Hell, I wouldn't have mind if some developer give the IP a try, while trying the best they can to stick to the Fallout universe and gameplay. But a FPS Fallout... From Bethesda... Ugh, it's like a sick, very sick joke. And the joke is on us Fallout fans.

 

Playing with INT 1 in Fallout is a whole new game. Just in case some people doesn't know, it's also possible in Arcanum, with maybe even more dialog options.

 

Heh. The seres of images and commentary in that thread was great.

The Bethseda way of playing an Int:1 & Char:1 character would be more akin' to: Repeat dubious minigame a gazillion times to get NPCs to give the same bland performance they give to every character, then proceed to play different dubious minigame to hack the computer. Or, if you couldn't be bothered, just smash it. (Which incidentally would be the preferred approach also for a smart character. Hey, it would be faster and the outcome in the game world no different.)

Now, I certainly believe it's possible to make a game using Oblivion-evolved tech: With decent combat mechanics, dialogue, meaningful choices, and stats that impact game play rather than just the tactics employed in how to defeat an enemy. Such a game could be very different from the originals and still retain being 'Fallout' to me. We'll see...

 

But... IT WOULD BE NEXT GENERATION!!!1one

Oblivion-evolved tech? You mean an evolution of being a Gamebryo/Speedtree techdemo without any merit with regard to gameplay? I don't see how this pile of garbage could possible involve into anything other than a pile of garbage utilizing newer version of Gamebryo and Speedtree.

I've been feeling masochistic recently, so I've been reading a couple of dozen Oblivion reviews... damn, these reviewers were full of shit. There are maybe a dozen or so sane reviews on the net, most notably the RPGcodex one, which features hilarious developer quotations.

And the Softpedia one, which criticises game reviewers for their superficiality and then rates the game 8.9/10... but not as a CRPG but as an action-adventure (which it is):

 

No. I meant that you could build a game that on the surface might look like Oblivion, but actually have proper RPG gameplay and decent combat mechanics in it. Extend that to a different setting and there you are.

Obviously, I belong to the liberal modernized protestant equivalent of Fallout fans. Those who believe that What Was Written were, in part, a product of its times; and thus we should seek to recapture the essence of what made it good, not view it as an infallible blueprint of perfection. Equally obvious is that, to many, I'm not a True Believer and should burn in several kinds of mutated radiated Hell for speaking Fallout's name in vain...

 

Yes, you could build a good RPG using established middleware. You could even make an isometric view RPG with turn-based combat using EXACTLY the same middleware (the Gamebryo engine is quite flexible in that regard). So what's your point?

Another splendid piece of "Oblivion tech" would be the marvellous "Radiant AI", often referred to as "Retard AI" - a piece of "next gen" tech that is so blantantly inferior to what Ultima 7 had to offer 15 years ago that it's almost comical.

Which Fallout traits were a "product of their time", in your opinion?

As I've mentioned before, it's not that REAL Fallout fans are overly dogmatic, they just don't buy into this "modern RPGs must have first-person view and real-time combat" bullshit, especially since these ingredients usually result in horrible mongrels that are failures as RPGs AND as action games (Gothic 1/2 are the only exceptions I can think of but combat sucks there, too).

The original Fallout devs have stated explicitly that it was their goal to transport the traditional P&P roleplaying experience to the CRPG genre. They made a choice to have turn-based combat, not because it was a "product of their time" (there are truckloads of RPGs with real-time combat predating Fallout), but because that's what they wanted to do. They opted for isometric view not because it was a "product of their time" (there have been first-person view RPGS for 15 years before Fallout was released) but because they chose to.

So yes, the basic guiding principle of modelling a CRPG to approximate P&P RPGs as closely as possible (ultimately, CRPGs will alsways be fundamentally different in many ways) is a huge part of made Fallout because it permeates all aspects of Fallout gameplay. You can't just snuff this huge part of Fallout game design because that's precisely what made Fallout great.

 

My point, which - by the way - was a footnote to my point about Oblivion being shallow was that F3 doesn't by default have to turn out the same way.

And I don't buy into the notion that a RPG can't both be good and have a first-person (or third-person!) view and real-time combat. I quite enjoyed Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines.

You're implying that the original developers would have made the same post-apocalyptic role-playing game today as they did back then. Besides the fact that it's a moot point, I find that to be a highly unlikely proposition. George Lucas anyone?

It is entirely possible (probable even) that I would have enjoyed the Fallouts just as much with a different underlying mechanic as long as the atmosphere, writing, and feeling of choice stayed the same. After all, it was set to use GURPS until February 1997, only a few months before its scheduled release.

 

VoodooExtreme has posted a new preview of Fallout 3.


Here's the scoop:

 

I hope I don't sound like an raving NMA lunatic when I say that I find the chances of FO3 becoming "best of the series" quite slim. The new screenies do look pretty awesome though.

 

new pics?

http://www.imagehosting.com/out.php/i849262_fallout3factsthatcouldsaveyourlife20070701024041192.jpg

http://www.imagehosting.com/out.php/i849280_fallout3factsthatcouldsaveyourlife20070701024106113.jpg

widescreen though.