When Fallout 3 came out, I got my hands on it that same day. My background was from Fallout 2 - never even heard of Bethesda's other games (Oblivion, or something, there's several).
I found it to be really neat in a lot of ways. Spectacular, even. But the things that were wrong with it just killed me. Fucking.. killed me. There was so much potential and power in their game engine but certain things were not there. The missing things were like gigantic black holes in Fallout 3 that made me even miss the old Fallout 2 itself.
The biggest point of horror for me was the followers implementation. In terms of their behavior and your ability to interact with them, it seemed as though they'd been put into the game in a state of 5% completion. There were, even, gamers on Bethesda's boards saying how useless followers were and how they'd never use them. In Fallout 2 we never said that - - some of us chose not to make character builds that used them, but nobody would call Cassidy or the robot USELESS. It wasn't supposed to be like that. I totally understood what the complainers on Bethesda's boards were saying, and couldn't necessarily disagree with them.
A point that was almost as bad was that they cut the ending short on the player. OOPS. Fallout 2 resolved the issue by having the player spawn back on the docks after doing the oil rig.. but yeah. Oops.
I soon found out that Bethesda would release some sort of user game-development tool that would be able to change what Fallout 3 does (this was back in November, 2008). I didn't know for sure if the tool would be powerful or not, but it seemed from other people's descriptions that it would be. I positively wanted to grab it and run with it, though.
The wait for the tool to be released sucked. It took like a month, but then it finally came out in December.
Over time, the tool proved to be powerful for some things, and completely useless for others. I was able to do both more than I had expected, and less.
So, I started doing stuff. The first upload of mine was version .1. It went through about 18 version updates over the course of the next 10 months. And now, a few days ago, I finally released what I have as a version 1. The big gamechanging-part of the mod (the main .esp file) is like 5 megs in size or something, and all put together, its like 22 megs. If the sound files were in .wav format instead of .ogg it would be like 300+ megs, I think.
Version 1.0 doesn't mean that I'm completely done with it, but it means that I feel like it does what I'd meant to well enough to feel like it can be version 1.
When you read through the description of my "mod", it almost sounds like I'm trying to sell it to Fallout 2 players. But I'm actually not. I was putting back what I felt was missing, and that's how the description ends up.
The things that were missing with the followers was one hell of a list. Very basic stuff was not there, such as:
Other stuff that felt wrong, but it was hard to put your finger on why, were for example:
So, it's been 10 months of messing with this "mod" of mine, it saw about 18 releases in which players were using the mod for their games, and as it stands now, I feel like it repairs a great deal of what felt missing. The details of what's been fixed don't make sense to post in this sort of thread (its very long).
Some things are not perfect, though. A big one is that I can't make a clean follower-management interface like Fallout 2 has. Fixing that was #1 on my list and it proved to be impossible. Almost everything had to be done through dialogue menus or these puny, annoying message boxes that have a max of 9 configurable buttons (I usually use dialogue). I don't like not having a nice interface, but I cannot change it. Another thing is that I don't have the followers making specific, funny comments at each other. I think I can manage this but it has to be a bit later, when I've got all of their voiced lines done properly (it's difficult to do this, even though you would think it shouldn't be. The development tool has certain limitations with this that make it a pain). Another thing is that I've not actually balanced the game to account for having a team of followers instead of just one. People have been using various difficulty-increasing mods, and in general, that point is kinda covered if the person using my mod does some of that.
The problem of the game ending prematurely was fixed very early on, by a mod named "Free Play After MQ". Then, Bethesda made what amounts to a giant mod of their own named "Broken Steel" which does it, too.
There are parts of it that cover for the fact that Fallout 3 has an FPS element at times where Fallout 2 did not. For example, with turn-based Fallout 2 you could easily see if you had a follower who was almost dead, but in Fallout 3 it would sneak up on you. You also had a chance of noticing when a follower has run out of stims during a fight. I've worked through many issues like that.
Something that worked its way into my "mod" is that in Fallout 2, your medicine/doctor skills had no impact at all on stimpack heal amounts, but Fallout 3 does this. If when you use my mod, you elect to use the stimpack change that I make, it works out like Fallout 2 in this regard. But, it means that Fallout 3's "medicine" skill is an odd beast. I don't even know what happens if you put "medicine" skill onto a character when using my stimpack mod. I never built medicine/doctor characters in Fallout 2 to speak of, so it wasn't something I was thinking about.
I have always felt that that my "mod" is more applicable to the people here on NMA than it is necessarily to the people who use the Bethesda forums, because many of them seem to be players of Bethesda's earlier games, whereas I'm not. I'm closer to the NMA people in this respect - Fallout 2, not Oblivion, etc.
Some of the people over there like what I did and are using my mod, which is of course great. But for them, it's not filling a gigantic void like it does for me. Now that they HAVE it, they would miss it if they deleted it, but it's not like the game had ghosts in it without it.
I made a thread for my mod here on the NMA mod forums, at http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=52389 .
Now that version 1.0 of this thing is there, I'll try to check these forums more often. And feel free to discuss, of course - - - this post is long as hell but wasn't meant to be one-sided.
I found it to be really neat in a lot of ways. Spectacular, even. But the things that were wrong with it just killed me. Fucking.. killed me. There was so much potential and power in their game engine but certain things were not there. The missing things were like gigantic black holes in Fallout 3 that made me even miss the old Fallout 2 itself.
The biggest point of horror for me was the followers implementation. In terms of their behavior and your ability to interact with them, it seemed as though they'd been put into the game in a state of 5% completion. There were, even, gamers on Bethesda's boards saying how useless followers were and how they'd never use them. In Fallout 2 we never said that - - some of us chose not to make character builds that used them, but nobody would call Cassidy or the robot USELESS. It wasn't supposed to be like that. I totally understood what the complainers on Bethesda's boards were saying, and couldn't necessarily disagree with them.
A point that was almost as bad was that they cut the ending short on the player. OOPS. Fallout 2 resolved the issue by having the player spawn back on the docks after doing the oil rig.. but yeah. Oops.
I soon found out that Bethesda would release some sort of user game-development tool that would be able to change what Fallout 3 does (this was back in November, 2008). I didn't know for sure if the tool would be powerful or not, but it seemed from other people's descriptions that it would be. I positively wanted to grab it and run with it, though.
The wait for the tool to be released sucked. It took like a month, but then it finally came out in December.
Over time, the tool proved to be powerful for some things, and completely useless for others. I was able to do both more than I had expected, and less.
So, I started doing stuff. The first upload of mine was version .1. It went through about 18 version updates over the course of the next 10 months. And now, a few days ago, I finally released what I have as a version 1. The big gamechanging-part of the mod (the main .esp file) is like 5 megs in size or something, and all put together, its like 22 megs. If the sound files were in .wav format instead of .ogg it would be like 300+ megs, I think.
Version 1.0 doesn't mean that I'm completely done with it, but it means that I feel like it does what I'd meant to well enough to feel like it can be version 1.
When you read through the description of my "mod", it almost sounds like I'm trying to sell it to Fallout 2 players. But I'm actually not. I was putting back what I felt was missing, and that's how the description ends up.
The things that were missing with the followers was one hell of a list. Very basic stuff was not there, such as:
- ability to stim them
ability to manage their weapons and ammo the way you wanted
ability to take more than one follower at a time
Dogmeat wasn't just hard to keep alive in the high-level game. It would run far away from you, fast, and suicide before you had a chance to get to it, and you couldn't configure it otherwise.
There was no equivalent to Sulik for good-aligned players. If you were good-aligned, you could go all the way to the middle of the game before finally encountering a follower that you could hire (Charon).
Other stuff that felt wrong, but it was hard to put your finger on why, were for example:
- followers seemed to die too frequently. It felt disproportionate.
Something about followers' behavior during combat made them a liability half the time, instead of something that strengthened you.
So, it's been 10 months of messing with this "mod" of mine, it saw about 18 releases in which players were using the mod for their games, and as it stands now, I feel like it repairs a great deal of what felt missing. The details of what's been fixed don't make sense to post in this sort of thread (its very long).
Some things are not perfect, though. A big one is that I can't make a clean follower-management interface like Fallout 2 has. Fixing that was #1 on my list and it proved to be impossible. Almost everything had to be done through dialogue menus or these puny, annoying message boxes that have a max of 9 configurable buttons (I usually use dialogue). I don't like not having a nice interface, but I cannot change it. Another thing is that I don't have the followers making specific, funny comments at each other. I think I can manage this but it has to be a bit later, when I've got all of their voiced lines done properly (it's difficult to do this, even though you would think it shouldn't be. The development tool has certain limitations with this that make it a pain). Another thing is that I've not actually balanced the game to account for having a team of followers instead of just one. People have been using various difficulty-increasing mods, and in general, that point is kinda covered if the person using my mod does some of that.
The problem of the game ending prematurely was fixed very early on, by a mod named "Free Play After MQ". Then, Bethesda made what amounts to a giant mod of their own named "Broken Steel" which does it, too.
There are parts of it that cover for the fact that Fallout 3 has an FPS element at times where Fallout 2 did not. For example, with turn-based Fallout 2 you could easily see if you had a follower who was almost dead, but in Fallout 3 it would sneak up on you. You also had a chance of noticing when a follower has run out of stims during a fight. I've worked through many issues like that.
Something that worked its way into my "mod" is that in Fallout 2, your medicine/doctor skills had no impact at all on stimpack heal amounts, but Fallout 3 does this. If when you use my mod, you elect to use the stimpack change that I make, it works out like Fallout 2 in this regard. But, it means that Fallout 3's "medicine" skill is an odd beast. I don't even know what happens if you put "medicine" skill onto a character when using my stimpack mod. I never built medicine/doctor characters in Fallout 2 to speak of, so it wasn't something I was thinking about.
I have always felt that that my "mod" is more applicable to the people here on NMA than it is necessarily to the people who use the Bethesda forums, because many of them seem to be players of Bethesda's earlier games, whereas I'm not. I'm closer to the NMA people in this respect - Fallout 2, not Oblivion, etc.
Some of the people over there like what I did and are using my mod, which is of course great. But for them, it's not filling a gigantic void like it does for me. Now that they HAVE it, they would miss it if they deleted it, but it's not like the game had ghosts in it without it.
I made a thread for my mod here on the NMA mod forums, at http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=52389 .
Now that version 1.0 of this thing is there, I'll try to check these forums more often. And feel free to discuss, of course - - - this post is long as hell but wasn't meant to be one-sided.
