* as the FOBOS dedicated forum has been archived ages ago, I am opening a thread to it here.
Last week I bought copies of Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance 1 and 2, and I received 1 today.
Having played the game now, I have discovered what a half-assed job Charles "Chuck" Cuevas and Iplay have done.
As most people know here, Iplay's management canceled a number of games in 2003/2004 to keep its head above water as Baldur's Gate 3 but also Van Buren which many fans including me were looking forwards to.
Remaining money was instead put in projects such as a console spin off based on the Fallout franchise for the PS2 and Xbox in the hope this would bring in some profit.
Expectations were even that the game would sell well enough that a sequel was planned and being developed before the release of the first FOBOS.
The second game was nearly finished but Iplay got into problems with Snowblind Studios, for not licensing the usage of their engine for FOBOS 1 (and 2)
Set aside that Van Buren got cancelled for this which already affected what Fallout fans thought of it.
Or how Chuck and Co mishandled Fallout lore such as the Brotherhood of Steel, treatment of Ghouls, Super Mutants, which surprisingly does make FOBOS a "prequel" to Bethesda's Fallout 3, or a sign of things to come.
Or what I already noticed when I played FOBOS for the first time; how ugly and "cheap" some of the cutscenes are, recycling concept and gameplay video parts from Fallout Tactics instead of having any studio make some decent new cutscenes.
(FOBOS design art was also ugly as hell)
When I played Dark Alliance 1 today and talked to NPCs I noticed how well designed and animated models of NPCs can be.
A lot of the named ones have various unique animation patterns they go though (heh I don't think the animators meant to put in an animation in which the watcher can see the bar owner's big breasts even better), and they never just stand there with just their mouth moving like in FOBOS were the NPCs might as well be mannequins.
A lot of the models are just plain ugly. Not as in "on purpose" but simply ugly made because the designers did not seem to have the time to make them better looking or was not interested in doing so, or capable of doing so.
And as I mentioned only a few models got some animation. I guess Iplay could not cut all the costs on that.
I do think a more action-y Fallout back in the early 2000s as a spin off to the main series could have worked.
And I think it could also have been done in the Snowblind engine.
Even the basic story is not that bad; a few decades after Fallout 1, the leader of a surviving group of Super Mutants learns from old archives that Vault Tec had their own secret vault to wait out the war and the decades after it, and were working on all kinds of new research and development, including a cure for sterility caused by mutation.
And with the Vault Dweller now being old and having disappeared from general wasteland society, a new hero is needed to take his/her place to prevent the Super Mutants from becoming a threat again.
But other than lore fixes, the BOS could have appeared be it as NPCs the player perhaps earns Power Armor from, so much more work would have had to be done on a project like this.
Snowblind Studios together with Black Isle, had they survived, should have done this project, rather than a B Team of developers.
If it had been anything like Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance which was pretty well received, this spin off could have been done a lot better.
Last week I bought copies of Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance 1 and 2, and I received 1 today.
Having played the game now, I have discovered what a half-assed job Charles "Chuck" Cuevas and Iplay have done.
As most people know here, Iplay's management canceled a number of games in 2003/2004 to keep its head above water as Baldur's Gate 3 but also Van Buren which many fans including me were looking forwards to.
Remaining money was instead put in projects such as a console spin off based on the Fallout franchise for the PS2 and Xbox in the hope this would bring in some profit.
Expectations were even that the game would sell well enough that a sequel was planned and being developed before the release of the first FOBOS.
The second game was nearly finished but Iplay got into problems with Snowblind Studios, for not licensing the usage of their engine for FOBOS 1 (and 2)
Set aside that Van Buren got cancelled for this which already affected what Fallout fans thought of it.
Or how Chuck and Co mishandled Fallout lore such as the Brotherhood of Steel, treatment of Ghouls, Super Mutants, which surprisingly does make FOBOS a "prequel" to Bethesda's Fallout 3, or a sign of things to come.
Or what I already noticed when I played FOBOS for the first time; how ugly and "cheap" some of the cutscenes are, recycling concept and gameplay video parts from Fallout Tactics instead of having any studio make some decent new cutscenes.
(FOBOS design art was also ugly as hell)
When I played Dark Alliance 1 today and talked to NPCs I noticed how well designed and animated models of NPCs can be.
A lot of the named ones have various unique animation patterns they go though (heh I don't think the animators meant to put in an animation in which the watcher can see the bar owner's big breasts even better), and they never just stand there with just their mouth moving like in FOBOS were the NPCs might as well be mannequins.
A lot of the models are just plain ugly. Not as in "on purpose" but simply ugly made because the designers did not seem to have the time to make them better looking or was not interested in doing so, or capable of doing so.
And as I mentioned only a few models got some animation. I guess Iplay could not cut all the costs on that.
I do think a more action-y Fallout back in the early 2000s as a spin off to the main series could have worked.
And I think it could also have been done in the Snowblind engine.
Even the basic story is not that bad; a few decades after Fallout 1, the leader of a surviving group of Super Mutants learns from old archives that Vault Tec had their own secret vault to wait out the war and the decades after it, and were working on all kinds of new research and development, including a cure for sterility caused by mutation.
And with the Vault Dweller now being old and having disappeared from general wasteland society, a new hero is needed to take his/her place to prevent the Super Mutants from becoming a threat again.
But other than lore fixes, the BOS could have appeared be it as NPCs the player perhaps earns Power Armor from, so much more work would have had to be done on a project like this.
Snowblind Studios together with Black Isle, had they survived, should have done this project, rather than a B Team of developers.
If it had been anything like Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance which was pretty well received, this spin off could have been done a lot better.
