taffer

That's like saying Superman 4 is another Superman movie, and that's good enough or saying that Batman & Robin is another Batman movie, and that's good enough.

Sure they are new entries into the franchise, but the most important thing is are they actually good and faithful to the previous entries.

From everything I am seeing, Fallout 3 has Bat-nipples.


You liked BoS, as in the previous console bastardization? That game had more in common with Gauntlet (old game from the 80s) than Fallout. It bastardized the series as much as the console Baldur's Gate games did. Those games should be wiped off the face of the earth (or at least buried in New Mexico with the ET 2600 cartridges).

slop101

It's another Oblivion-type game by the makers of Oblivion, and that's more than enough for me...

Groucho

Makers of KOTOR 2 and NWN 2.

taffer

But it is not supposed to be an Oblivion-type game. It is supposed to be a Fallout game.

Fallout is not supposed to be a first person shooter type of game where you wander around aimlessly going through a thousand different dungeons that all look the same and going to a bunch of different towns where everyone has the same face and voice actor.

That's the Elder Scrolls, but it is not Fallout. They may as well call the game "Elder Scrolls V: We Put Fallout In The Subtitle Just To Increase Sales Even Though The Game Has Little To Nothing To Do With Fallout."


Yeah, and I wish they would resurrect the "Van Buren" project and release it as The Real Fallout 3.

Interplay most likely still owns what remains of the Van Buren project though, so that probably won't happen.

Tuan Jim

I don't think it's worth it to embed these vids, but they're worth watching if you've got the time.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36162.html -- director does mention the enclave being the shadow gov't here. Makes it sound a bit more like post-Fallout 2 and they've moved back East (not too many clues though). Apparently there's a level cap at 20.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/37141.html - the other video I referred to earlier - heavy on combat, low on other demos.

slop101

I don't care about what it's supposed to be - I care about what it is. If it was just like the other Fallout games, it wouldn't even be on my radar as I didn't care much for the one I played. But I sure loved the shit out of Morrowind and Oblivion.

bee_01

Fallout 1 and 2 are huge piles of crap - screw that stupid isometric headache inducing perspective - text for life.

fumanstan

An isometric view gives you headaches? If anything, typically the first person perspective (or over the shoulder 3rd person in this case) are the ones that cause people issues.

Tuan Jim

A few more notes from the interview vid I posted above.

1. Regardless of charisma/perks, you're limited to one companion (not counting dog). Although that also probably doesn't take into account "mysterious stranger" perk which was mentioned. You can also give companion ammo, armor, weapons, etc. Hopefully they have a proper trade interface this time - the partner trade/equip function was always pretty broke in the other games.

2. Main quest only should take around 20 hours - about 100 hours gameplay for hitting everything else.

3. Action points are definitely included - you can queue attacks on more than one enemy before combat actually starts. I don't think you can actually run and gun it like a real FPS unless I'm missing something.

I stand by what I said earlier about the nostalgia factor overcoming all else. Yes, they're putting the name on it and with it comes expectations, but it's never going to live up to everything in the original (heck, I printed up the entire fan-made PnP RPG back in the day but never had anyone to play with) - although the wasteland mod for HL was pretty fun back in the day ;p

It's still been 10 years since the release of the last real sequel if you don't want to count tactics and I'm assuming you don't. I have my CDs and I won't be dumping them anytime soon - I can pop them in anytime I want to play through again - but that won't stop me from enjoying a new iteration of an old favorite (even if it isn't byte for byte the same game).

taffer

Which Fallout did you play? There are two "official" Fallout games and two spin-off games.

Fallout 1 and 2 were the official games and they were released on PC only in '97 and '98 respectively.

Fallout Tactics was a spin-off that was released on PC only in '01. It was a strategy game instead of an RPG like the previous games.

Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel was the console game released on PS2 and Xbox in '04. It had basically nothing to do with the previous games. This game was a pure dungeon crawl like the old Gauntlet game. It was a Fallout game in name only.

If the Fallout game you played was one of the latter two, I can understand why you might not have liked it. Tactics had very mixed reviews, some loved it and others despised it. BoS was hated by most everyone (at least the hardcore Fallout audience). Now, if you played Fallout 1 and 2, and didn't like them, then there is something wrong....

Its a 2D game? Damn those graphics suck. We need HDR bloom lighting and volumetric clouds and other techy soundy crap or else the game sucks.

Liver&Onions

I always confuse fallout with Wastelands.

Tuan Jim

http://www.atomicgamer.com/article.php?id=594

I did come across this preview while waiting to download the patches for Tactics just now (feel the need to play that one again). A few more explanations on different things.

slop101

It was Fallout 1 on the PC. It was well-made and all, I just don't care for that style of gameplay - it felt too much like a point&click adventure (which I don't like), only with a lot of resource management (which I also don't like).

taffer

Well, Fallout is the spiritual successor to Wasteland. Both games were made by Interplay. Technically, Fallout was made by Black Isle, but Black Isle was a division of Interplay specifically for making crpgs.

nickdawgy

I bet you didn't like Thief Deadly Shadows or Dues Ex Invisble War, either. I did, and while I do want the game to be good, it doesn't have to blow me out of the water.

What are you seeing that makes you fear the game will suck?

nickdawgy

You've clearly never played them. Fallout 2 is a masterpiece.

Tuan Jim

Deus Ex Invisible War did suck balls (and did a fairly poor job of it), but the first Deus Ex was a true masterpiece that I've enjoyed many times over (despite being at least 3x as long as the sequel - it just kept going and going and... in a good way). That's a game that would really benefit from a workover with a new engine - a la HL Source updates. It was kinda painful with the load times the first time through but once I got a better machine, I flew through there. That was a truly branching game (in play-style if not story).

taffer

Didn't we have this discussion once before? Or maybe it was with someone else and my memory is going bad, I don't know.

Anyway, Thief 3 and Deus Ex 2 were clearly not as good as the previous games in their respective franchises. Both games are poster children as examples of dumbing down PC games for consoles.

I still did like Thief 3 even though everything was just so small and basic compared to the previous games. The first two games had huge maps to explore and every one was open to go anywhere. Thief 3 had very small maps and they were completely linear. It was still a good game, just not an excellent game like Thief 1 and 2.

However, I agree with Tuan Jim that Deus Ex 2 sucked balls. Nothing about Invisible War was good. The original Deus Ex was an enormous game and it never felt repetitious either. It was a true mix of RPG and FPS too. Choices you made early on would have consequences later. Invisible War however is a disgrace to the name Deus Ex. IW was so small (roughly a third the size of the the original game). Much of the RPG aspects where eliminated and the game was mostly FPS, and a very generic FPS at that.

So I like Deadly Shadows, but despise Invisible War.



Mostly just the fact that so far it looks like "Oblivion with guns". Bethesda doesn't really have a great track record. What good games have they done other than Elder Scrolls? Nothing that comes immediately to mind. One hit franchise doesn't mean the company can turn everything it touches into gold.

Personally, I am not a huge fan of Elder Scrolls anyway. It really is light on role playing compared to the truly great crpgs out there. One small example, any character can join any guild. You can be a fighter than never has cast a single magic spell, but yet you will be invited to join the mage guild. You can do all the mage quests with no problem whatsoever, and you will even still become the archmage of the guild after completing all the quests. That's just ridiculous. A true role playing game would not allow that.

The original two Fallout games were some of the best role playing games ever, and they were true role playing. You could literally play through the game using dozens and dozens of various tactics and character builds. You could play a completely pacifist character who never engages in violence. Yes, the game can be beaten without killing a single person.

The Fallout games didn't hold your hand telling you where to go. You start the original game knowing only that the computer chip that controls the water supply in your Vault is malfunctioning and the Overseer sends you out to find a replacement. You have no idea where to find a replacement, and the game doesn't hold your hand telling you where to go. It is a true quest where you can go anywhere at any time looking for a replacement computer chip.

Every action in the game has a real consequence later on. The ending of the game actually does change depending on the actions you take throughout the entire game. It isn't like some games where there is a "good" ending and a "bad" ending and the deciding factor is 5 minutes before the end of the game, so you can just reload to see both endings. Every action right from the start of Fallout has a consequence.

When I look at videos of Fallout 3, I don't see any of this stuff happening. I see "Oblivion with guns". It looks like it will be a "dumbed down for consoles" game where it is very very heavy on the FPS and very very light on the RPG. That really is what Oblivion is anyway. It is heavy on the first person hack-n-slashing and light on the actual role playing.

But thats what today's gamers want I guess. They want the video game equivalent of the one hundred million dollar summer blockbuster movie full of actions and explosions and not much else. The deep crpgs of yesteryear are gone because today's gamers don't want them anymore. Just the old codgers like myself still want them, and we aren't the primary demographic any longer. Kids today....

As another example, look at Bioware's first two games: the Baldur's Gate saga on PC. Those were some deep, epic crpgs. Nowadays, Bioware has switched to console games and they are producing the hollywood blockbusters that are nowhere near as deep and epic. Mass Effect has about a tenth of the epicness of Baldur's Gate.

I think I am officially getting too old..... I sound like my parents complaining about that "darn" rock-n-roll music.

Raul3

Yeah, you have lost the power to enjoy games it seems.

I don't care about legacy or the past. If Fallout 3 is a good game by itself that's fine for me.

bee_01

Fallout 1 and 2 were garbage for abandoning the graphic style and perspective that RPG masterpieces like Wasteland/Ultima/etc perfected. They got too carried away with those fancy high resolution 256 color graphics. I couldn't even be bothered to try playing them because of all the unnecessary eye candy - you could tell that the games were going to suck based on the screenshots alone.

Tuan Jim

Just a quick note - the preview I listed above does go into some detail about the character thing - they say that it's essentially impossible to go 100% pacifist (or nearly impossible to make it through the game without killing anyone) - but I still think the videos that they're pimping are just trying to display the graphical highlights rather than the complete focus of the game. I think they're going about it the wrong way, but the interviews make it sound deeper than the videos are currently showing.

fumanstan

I'm pretty sure he knew that.

lordwow

Dot dot dot.

JasonF

I agree with this completely.

Also, I liked Thief 3 a lot and though Deus Ex 2 was mediocre at best. I'll also add Bioshock to the list of recent sequels that did it right, even though it's only a sequel to the System Shock games in the loosest sense.

If you want to go back further, I liked Ultima 7 notwithstanding the departure from the top-down isometric view, and liked Wizardry 8 even though it was markedly different from earlier versions. Might and Magic 7 was a good game, but not as rich as the earlier incarnations of the series. I never played the Bard's Tale revival, but it looked incredibly stupid.

And I want Planescape 2 as an FPS.

fumanstan

Speaking of which, this is great:

http://www.octopusoverlords.com/foru...hp?f=2&t=61346