1UP interview with Emil

[Crni Vuk]

well actualy "whining" (whinging?) and "flaming" of Bethesda and their devs was frowned upon here in the beginings as it can be even seen with some long time users that receiving a strike for "trolling".

The NMA community is not responsible for the attitude of its users. But in General, NMA gave Bethesda the benefit of the doubt. If you dont believe it you can search for the threads were Emil replied in here. It was pretty friendly. At least the few times he posted.

 

[Holocausto]

at what point does it stop being criticisim?


1) the looks are ok, but the texture skins are shitty.



6) overall the dialogue is very poor. even teen age level books i have read in the past have far superior writing than the dialogue in this game. yet its written for those over the age of 16 (18)

Just wanted to respond to those 2 points. The textures are indeed sub par from a PC gamers perspective but of course we know that it was made for console as well and consoles have certain limitations. It really irritates me that they didn't make the textures high res so they look great on PC and have the lower quality for console. Yes it's more effort but not undoable. I don't know how many textures are in fallout 3 total but it's not something that couldn't be done if they really wanted to.

PC gamers once again get dragged down to consoles level in that aspect.

The dialog: yeah I've actually redid the dialog for one quest though I'm still working on it as I need to finish the quest so I can go about changing more dialog (where I can) but it already is far more intelligent, funny and adult than beths dialog interactions if I may say so. The problem though is that NPC are VOICE acted so you are limited by what beth chose for them to say so it's very tricky to work around them and still be cohesive, funny, intelligent and try and bring some greater "connection & interaction" to the game. I can provide the changed dialog if you'd like to try it.

Here for anybody who wants to try:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CMFGI8W0

It's for the quest "stealing independence". You must load a save from BEFORE you meet & help Sydney or else you will miss all the great introductory dialog. Also if you are at Rivet City and have yet to speak to Abraham Washington there is 1 funny line I added to the dialog with him.

I'd like to attempt to re write much of the quests dialog (where applicable)but my time is limited and I need to experience a quest first to get a feel for spots (if any) I can re write some dialog.

 

[TheWesDude]

we are actually having a discussion on another msg board i frequent about consoles vs pc and there really is only 1 hardcore defender of consoles over pcs that wont give up. the sad thing is, he probably believes that consoles > pcs even though they are much more limited.

but on topic...

i really do wonder why the dialogue is so poor. it may be due to having everything voice acted if they did REAL dialogue it may have run into a space restriction, so rather than deal with that, they just said fuck dialogue, keep it stupid.

stupid beth, not everything has to be voice-acted, it will detract from the game and make it horrible.

 

[Holocausto]

we are actually having a discussion on another msg board i frequent about consoles vs pc and there really is only 1 hardcore defender of consoles over pcs that wont give up. the sad thing is, he probably believes that consoles > pcs even though they are much more limited.

but on topic...

i really do wonder why the dialogue is so poor. it may be due to having everything voice acted if they did REAL dialogue it may have run into a space restriction, so rather than deal with that, they just said fuck dialogue, keep it stupid.

stupid beth, not everything has to be voice-acted, it will detract from the game and make it horrible.

Yeah there is an 80 character restriction in the text. For what reasons I can only guess, such as the larger size of the font used the less space there is so maybe they didn't want undue scrolling (they could've possibly used a different/thinner font to mitigate that I think). Also the voice dialog is exactly the same (as far as I've come across) as the text when an NPC speaks so really I don't believe the voice dialog HAS to be restricted but they seem to have chose to restrict it to match the text limitations is my guess (I'm only guessing in all this here I can't know for sure why they did what they did).

Bottom line I'd like to see less juvenile. generic writing and more "brassy, colorful, rude etc" type stuff. And not rude in a 13 year old junior high way. There are some voice dialogs and regular dialogs which break out of the "generic teenager with anger issues and limited simple "humor" but these cases are very sporadic IMO. I can think of only one right now where a raider will say "first mistake....LAST mistake" It's a classic which makes me laugh hard. That's the type of more adult dialog which is funny and not the kiddie playground humor. Beth need to hire writers with a penchant for extreme, outrageous, black, sardonic writing and know how to write "in your face" lines without sounding like your character is some 15 year old "know it all" teen who thinks the world is "gay" as evidenced by his juvenile dialog options.

I edited my previous post and put up the file if you want to try it.

 

[TheWesDude]

no, what im saying is if the average npc has say 25 lines that equals 6mb per npc and 500 NPCs, thats how much "storage"space is being used by dialogue.

now lets say they decide to get creative and move on from the juvenile stage. so they change the writing to be the same 500 NPCs, but now have 40 lines per NPC that equals 8mb per npc. thats a large increase in the storage space needed to store all that speech.

they may have kept the dialogue juvenile to keep the word count down to make sure there was enough room on it on the DVDs.

 

[Holocausto]

no, what im saying is if the average npc has say 25 lines that equals 6mb per npc and 500 NPCs, thats how much "storage"space is being used by dialogue.

now lets say they decide to get creative and move on from the juvenile stage. so they change the writing to be the same 500 NPCs, but now have 40 lines per NPC that equals 8mb per npc. thats a large increase in the storage space needed to store all that speech.

they may have kept the dialogue juvenile to keep the word count down to make sure there was enough room on it on the DVDs.

Ah, ok. Yeah I know exactly what you are saying. But hey with all the space they saved using shitty low res console textures that should make more room for better voice dialogs. Or like you said just stick with text and knock the file size down to a non issue. But I know about audio codecs pretty well and what agravates me is that there are codecs like mp3 or speex or some similar codec that immensely reduces the file size with a near imperceptable loss of quality (if you use a high enough bitrate). Are they using these formats? I don't know.

I mean I don't know what format the voice dialogs are in F3 but I'm guessing it's .wav format as that is a lossless format (which uses the most space) used by many games for sound effects, speech etc. Mp3 & .ogg are highly compressible form massive reduction in file size are used for in game music & menu music on MANY games so I'm really baffled as to why they don't also use that for speech/sound effects as well (or do they?). Space would literally be a non issue if that was done.

 

[Slaughter Manslaught]

Frankly, I think it would be much better if voice acting was restricted to important NPCs, because I prefer a few important NPCs with awesome voice acting instead of everyone and his dog having a voice, resulting in a bunch of people with the same voice, horrible VA and short dialogues. All old men except Tenpenny sound like the same person. All raiders talk with the same voice. All Talon Mercs have the same voice. All Ghouls have the same voice. All grannies sound like the same person. I think only Burke, Lucas Simms, Tenpenny, the Lyons' Pride members, Lyons and his daughter and some other NPCs have diferent voices. Almost everyone else sounds like the same person.

 

[Ausir]

Burke is voiced by the same actor who did all super mutants (including Fawkes), sentry bots and protectrons. And I don't think anyone in the Lyons' Pride aside from Sarah has a unique voice.

 

[Slaughter Manslaught]

Burke is voiced by the same actor who did all super mutants (including Fawkes), sentry bots and protectrons. And I don't think anyone in the Lyons' Pride aside from Sarah has a unique voice.

Well, I don't remember right, I'll get around to checking it.

And he seems to be a better Voice Actor than most of the cast, although Burke is kinda comical. At least he varies on his voices, so I'm not hearing Mr. Burke's voice in the Super Mutants.

 

[Public]

Burke is voiced by the same actor who did all super mutants (including Fawkes), sentry bots and protectrons. And I don't think anyone in the Lyons' Pride aside from Sarah has a unique voice.

Well, I don't remember right, I'll get around to checking it.

And he seems to be a better Voice Actor than most of the cast, although Burke is kinda comical. At least he varies on his voices, so I'm not hearing Mr. Burke's voice in the Super Mutants.

Ausir is responsible for Fallout Wiki (http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_Wiki), and most of the information about Fallout 3 was put by him. So you can be sure that he knows what he's talking about.

 

[Crni Vuk]

Burke is voiced by the same actor who did all super mutants (including Fawkes), sentry bots and protectrons. And I don't think anyone in the Lyons' Pride aside from Sarah has a unique voice.

So much to the "more voiceactors" and "less generic voices".

If you ask me the voice acting in Fallout 3 just as bad like Oblivion. If not even worse in some cases ...

 

[Per]

You people forget about the scores of reviews that have spoken exuberantly on the top-notchness of voice acting in Fallout 3.

 

[Fade]

You people forget about the scores of reviews that have spoken exuberantly on the top-notchness of voice acting in Fallout 3.

Which just makes me wonder what game they are playing?
What they are smoking?
Or whether someone has paid them off.

Voice acting is three things in one. The words they are reading. The direction they are given. And finally the ability of the actor to emote the right feeling.

What are the reviewers comparing Fallout 3 to that it is top notch voice acting? Because it's not radio, movies or television. Top notch in computer games.... right & what is different in a computer game compared to radio or CGI in movies? Not a damn thing.

 

[Public]

Maybe by "top-nochness" they mean the quality of sound is good? Like you know...we can hear voice acting so that is kinda awesome that at least we have it?

 

[Fade]

Maybe by "top-nochness" they mean the quality of sound is good? Like you know...we can hear voice acting so that is kinda awesome that at least we have it?

You don't want to go there. Sound Quality varies alot with 3 different factors.
1) The equipment used to record the original sound.
2) The item that the sound is recorded to.
3) The system you play the sound on.

Problems with any of them can ruin the quality quite easily and Bethsoft does *not* control the last factor so praising them for it is well quite dumb.

 

[Public]

Maybe by "top-nochness" they mean the quality of sound is good? Like you know...we can hear voice acting so that is kinda awesome that at least we have it?

You don't want to go there. Sound Quality varies alot with 3 different factors.
1) The equipment used to record the original sound.
2) The item that the sound is recorded to.
3) The system you play the sound on.

Problems with any of them can ruin the quality quite easily and Bethsoft does *not* control the last factor so praising them for it is well quite dumb.

And do you think an ordinary teenage-gamer knows anything about sound engineering? Don't think so.
They probably would go with "Oh, super mutants sound awesome!", and for them this is a proof for a "high quality" sound.

 

[Fade]

And do you think an ordinary teenage-gamer knows anything about sound engineering? Don't think so.
They probably would go with "Oh, super mutants sound awesome!", and for them this is a proof for a "high quality" sound.

Teenage gamers aren't the ones saying this. It is the reviewers who I hoped had a clue about how things work. Especially considering that they only have to change the headphones/speakers or the sound card to prove what I am saying.

I wouldn't expect anyone without an into the sound industry to understand why you get a hiss on tapes & none on CDs or where to put the mics & speakers just from looking at a room.

 

[Public]

Teenage gamers aren't the ones saying this. It is the reviewers who I hoped had a clue about how things work. Especially considering that they only have to change the headphones/speakers or the sound card to prove what I am saying.

And who made those reviews? Mostly teenage gamers

 

[Fade]

Teenage gamers aren't the ones saying this. It is the reviewers who I hoped had a clue about how things work. Especially considering that they only have to change the headphones/speakers or the sound card to prove what I am saying.

And who made those reviews? Mostly teenage gamers

Ouch. When you were a kid did the adults take your words as the authority on anything? Seemed quite rare when/where I was growing up. So why is the gaming industry doing just nowdays?

 

[TorontoReign]

I wonder why I used to pay attention to game reviewers. Good voice work..... .....
Nowadays I might still look at their review to get some general info on the game, but for the most part I ask people that have played the game what they think of it.

Usually if they say it has "AWESOME GRAPHICS" and "IT"S BLOODY AS HELL!!!111" I can disregard anything they say from then on.

One example of stupid people like this is a conversation I overheard while in Gamestop not too long back. I heard a guy talking about the new bond movie. He said he went to watch it and the guy asked if it was any good. The guy said "No man don't watch it. Trust me."

The other guy was like "Really? I heard it was good."

The other guy replied, "No it wasn't."

Now I don't know if the movie was good or not, but I'm just saying. That guy probably went around telling everyone that the movie was horrible based on one persons vague comment.

Lots of people actually base their movie and game reviews off of word of mouth like that. It's insane. That would be like:

"I heard the Holocaust never happened."

"Really? But I heard it did in books and stuff."

"No. Trust me."

It's kinda funny though because even though I know the marketing gimmicks I still fall for them every now and again. I went to buy a game for Christmas and I could not find anything worth playing. I stumbled upon Rise of the Argonauts, a supposed Action/RPG. I bought it and found that it had a little bit of dialog, a few kinds of weapons and armor, and very little character development. Calling this game a RPG is bullshit. It's really just a hack and slash with a few skills. Whatever.

For what it's worth I don't "Hate" the dialog in Fallout 3, but it's unacceptable for a company that makes as much damn money as Bethesda.

end rant.