Kyuu said:
Yazman said:
I think NMA would have hated Fallout 3 no matter what Bethesda did.
That's such a tired line of bullshit. One, "NMA" is not a singular entity. It's a forum. There are many people who post, each with their own opinions. Perhaps you may think there's some kind of "group think" mentality, but that's an easy mistake to make when you're not the sort of person who thinks things through. Obviously, a lot of the more tenured posters are going to agree on some points. You'll find a similar phenomenon occurring in most social groups, whether it's an online forum, a neighborhood watch meeting, or a group of old-fogie politicians chairing a committee. I'll leave it to you to try and reason out why this is. It's not that hard.
When I refer to "NMA" I am not saying it is a single entity, I am referring to the prevailing opinion here that most people have, and have had since before they knew anything about the game. I remember people had zero enthusiasm for it the second it was announced Bethesda had the rights to a Fallout sequel. Many people here complained, whinged and bitched unendingly and with no actual reason to do so in the first year or so when we knew literally NOTHING about Fallout 3.
However, dissenting viewpoints are not discouraged. People just leap to that conclusion when they come roaring in with tired old arguments that have been presented and refuted before. Then, becoming frustrated, they make more and more a nuisance of themselves until they are finally smacked down by the local authority figures who get tired of it, a.k.a. the mods.
I never said anything about dissenting viewpoints being discouraged, and I know they aren't. Most of us here, even the ones I disagree with still make coherent arguments and tend not to resort to ad hominem bullshit like many of the newbies. I agree with you that they often become a nuisance. Not all of them but a lot of them just write their posts in an overly aggressive or condescending way.. although many of us here are also guilty of doing this.
Anyways, back to the point: even if you insist of thinking of "NMA" as some singular consciousness holding a single set of opinions, the assertion that Bethesda was doomed to being hated no matter what they did is simply foolish.
I don't think NMA is a hive mind consciousness. When I say "NMA" I just refer to the prevailing view here, I freely admit and agree with you that many of us have entirely different opinions. I think probably about 60-70% of people here hate Fallout 3 with a passion though, and the rest either like it or think its an improvement over Interplay's crap (like Fallout 3 and POS). You can see there's a bigger divide over Fallout 3 than any other Fallout-related property just by looking at the often raging debates on the Fallout 3 Discussion board. I apologise for not making what I meant more clearly, I should have clarified it (or just been more precise) rather than just saying "NMA."
Bethesda made a game that has more in common with Oblivion than any of the Fallout games.
I don't agree, I think it does have some things in common with Fallout 3 but that's just because another company developed a Fallout game. If Bioware developed Fallout 3 it would have had things in common with Mass Effect/KOTOR/Jade Empire, and if Blizzard had developed Fallout 3 it would have things in common with Diablo and WoW.
I think the best way to put this is when a Blizzard developer responded to accusations of Blizz making Diablo 3 "WoW-like" and that it should have "nothing in common with WoW", and the developer responded and basically said that every developers uses systems and ideas from their recent properties even if the new game they are developing is entirely different, because every new game most developers make is sort of like the sum of all their previous work in the setting of its universe. They take with them what they have learned and they can't really do anything but do that, and thats why Fallout 3 has things in common with Oblivion. I guarantee you that if they make another, it will have a lot LESS in common with the Elder Scrolls series because they have grounded themselves in the game's universe and will thus be able to learn from what didn't work and what did.
Even Tactics did a better job with the canon and Fallout universe, and it was a spin-off. Bethesda's intention was to cash in on their core audience, that's it.
I think Tactics did a terrible thing to the series by virtue of the fact it was a tactics-RPG/strategy-RPG, essentially being a combat-focused game which took away basically all enjoyment I got from playing Fallout - which I get from the role-playing/RPG part. Squaresoft did the same thing when they developed Final Fantasy Tactics which really stands in the same position as Fallout Tactics in terms of how the fans view it. A lot of people like it but a lot of people were disappointed.
I enjoy the combat part of Fallout but at the end of the day, I can deal without it. I am one of those people who prefers to play mostly avoiding combat and entering it for the parts that advance the story in the way I want it to. For example, random combat I can't fucking stand most of the time but killing Salvatore or the Mordinos is cool with me because its part of the game's world and story, part of my experience. Fallout Tactics is an abomination to me because in my opinion they stripped it of its soul, the "experience" and "role-playing" parts of it.
Bethesda is a corporation and the purpose of a corporation is inevitably to generate profit by whatever means possible. At the end of the day in a capitalist society passion will ALWAYS give way to profit so what you are saying here is really a moot point. Interplay's intention was to cash in on their core audience too, thats why they developed shitty games like Fallout Tactics (strategy-RPG? A pathetic, horrible fucking game that I despise utterly) and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (Basically a Diablo clone, and a TERRIBLE one at that).
Fallout 3 at least RESEMBLES a Fallout game and is an RPG, and even if its a flawed one I think it is a hell of a lot better than anything Interplay ever produced post-Fallout 2.
They never had any intention of doing anything different than what they do best, as their PR-man made clear from the beginning, and it shows.
Well I think what they meant by that is, that they were going to use some systems from Oblivion regardless because thats what they know how to do and Fallout 3 could have been a LOT worse if they carbon copied Fallout 2 like you seem to think would be a better option (correct me if I'm wrong). Many of the systems that I dislike in Fallout 3 are not inherently bad but more unpolished.
Basically I think what they meant by that is that they were going to be influenced in their development by their previous projects
no matter what they did with Fallout 3, primarily because no human is capable of disregarding his previous experience, especially when the Bethesda team had been developing the Elder Scrolls series for so long.
Imagine what Fallout 3 would have been like if developed by Origin, Rockstar, or Blizzard! I guarantee you that it would have had features characteristic of the Ultima series (Origin), or characteristics of Grand Theft Auto (Rockstar), or characteristics of World of Warcraft/Diablo (Blizzard).
You are entitled to like trash games like Oblivion
What the fuck? You just pulled that out of your ass. I hate Oblivion and I think it is a thoroughly un-enjoyable game. The only redeeming feature of Oblivion was the Shivering Isles expansion which was actually fantastic imo. But don't put words into my mouth, I never said I liked Oblivion. Once you start telling me what I think without my having said anything of the sort, thats when you start losing all credibility in my eyes.
and it's slightly-modified reskin, Fallout 3. That's your prerogative. That doesn't somehow make it wrong for anyone here to criticize it for being not only a trash game, but a trash game using the IP that Bethesda purchased and, inexplicably, completely tossed out with the exception of the most superficial elements.
I just think many people's criticisms of Fallout 3 are basically nit-picking, or unjustified hatred (and it is hatred a lot of the time) over something they should just be criticising. I don't think its wrong to criticise it but many of the reasons people have for calling it a "trash game" are not enough to justify calling it trash to me, and in many cases are just plain wrong or shortsighted - for example I think its ridiculously silly to assume that the government would not have a presence in its capitol. They had to come from somewhere! They must have had their own vaults around the country that they migrated from, rather than just staying on an oil rig for 200 years.
