According to The Escapist's Extra Credits...

Oh noes somebody mocks aother person on the interbuts! YOU GOTTA DO SOMETHNG! the interwebz decency is at risk!
 
Walpknut said:
Someone really got defensive... Hey, lets send him and email, I am sure he will give a fuck.

And again with the immershuns crap. Backstory is not a definitive indicator of good characterization, Fallout 3 doesnt eve ncreate a blank slate character, it creates a all powerful force that can do anythign in the wasteland without actual concecuences. And even tought I liek the tutorial growing up in the Vault, there nto much you can do in that part to actualy affect yoru character, for example if you get into the fight with Butch and accidentaly kill him your character would start the thrid act in a Vault prison and it igves you certain boosts and penalties, or if he accepts the teachers offer to change his tests and then he rats him out he would start the game with the Overseer's favor. etc. New Vegas doen't give oyu a tutorial on how you grew up period, but it lets you select traits that lets you stablish yoru character as a person with different weakneses and strenghts, handicaps and etc. Thats still a little clunky but its a much better implementation of game mechanics.
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I'm really getting tired of you. So because there's a hundred things you couldn't do to effect the tutorial it's a bad one? They only have so much time to create the game and not even Bioware does this type of stuff, not even the first games had this type of cause and effect stuff in it. So you guys go around hating this game because of what you didn't get rather than what you did get? And for fuck sake it IMMERSION! And learn to fucking spell. And yes Extra Credits gives a shit about their emails, half the episodes started from emails.
 
They had double the time Obsidian had, and Van Buren (the original Fallout 3) was gonna have that kidn of mechanics in it, you were a prison inmate, you could choos to either be guilty of what you did and get penalties and boosts or be innocent and be a blank slate, FO1 and 2 also gave you he choice of using premade characters with backstory, traits and skills predefined, New Vegas had a lot less time than FO3 in production and they made a better use of game mechanscs in their character creation process, And just after getting out of town you have chocie that actualy have concecuences, you can help the Powder Gangers take over Goodsprings, or defend it. In FO3 yo uare forced to the exact same tutorial where the same exact things happen every time you play it, like FO2 it had a shitty tutorial, but the rest of FO2 was gold, when the rest of FO3.... well.
 
Blatherscythe said:
not even the first games had this type of cause and effect stuff in it.
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Have you even played the first two games? They definitely had a lot more cause and effect than FO3.

So you guys go around hating this game because of what you didn't get rather than what you did get?
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Lack of choices and decent dialogue in an RPG is a valid reason to dislike it.

And for fuck sake it IMMERSION! And learn to fucking spell.
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Not everyone on this forum lives in an English speaking country, so don't be such a prick about spelling.

Edit: By the way, you should have said "it's IMMERSION!" rather than "it IMMERSION!" hypocrite. :roll:
 
I wish FO3 would have made more about this "growing up in a vault" stuff. It had great potential. Sadly the bland and shallow characters ruined that experience for me.
 
The growing up is pretty cool the first time around but once you make a new character you start to realize how shallow it is and how little impact it has on the game.
 
And maybe you don't get that when I write "Immershuns" is a dleiberate misspelling of the word, makign fun of people that use that word to describe things that are not immersive for very shallow reasons, like having a fist person POV.
Also I don't get why yo uget so defensive, it's liek you registered in this forum just to get pissed for nothing. Its an argument, give a counterargument if you don't agree with what other say, making childish persnal insults just makes you look like an idiot.
 
Walpknut said:
And maybe you don't get that when I write "Immershuns" is a dleiberate misspelling of the word, makign fun of people that use that word to describe things that are not immersive for very shallow reasons, like having a fist person POV.
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To each his own. Though I'd probably punch you in the face if I ever met you for being such a pretentious dick.
 
Walpknut said:
And again with the immershuns crap. Backstory is not a definitive indicator of good characterization
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Neither is thrusting someone into a world with little explanation or reason to care about it. Not everyone enjoyed Fallout 3's intro but it at least described where you're coming from. Maybe you hated Liam Neeson and found him a completely unrelatable prat. Well, that's a reason to complain about not having more, "I hate you Dad" dialogue or being able to put him down like an old horse.

Walpknut said:
Fallout 3 doesnt eve ncreate a blank slate character, it creates a all powerful force that can do anythign in the wasteland without actual concecuences.
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That's really more about having options and consequences, something NV made available in great quantities but was lacking in F3.

Walpknut said:
And even tought I liek the tutorial growing up in the Vault, there nto much you can do in that part to actualy affect yoru character, for example if you get into the fight with Butch and accidentaly kill him your character would start the thrid act in a Vault prison and it igves you certain boosts and penalties, or if he accepts the teachers offer to change his tests and then he rats him out he would start the game with the Overseer's favor. etc. New Vegas doen't give oyu a tutorial on how you grew up period, but it lets you select traits that lets you stablish yoru character as a person with different weakneses and strenghts, handicaps and etc. Thats still a little clunky but its a much better implementation of game mechanics.
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That quickly falls into the hole of, "Well, why can't I do X, Y, Z?". Options are always good but there are also realistic limitations (plot wise and design wise). And I know you're just providing an example but I some how doubt the overseer would throw you in a "vault prison". More than likely you would have been executed immediately or you would have to escape (leaving the MacGuffin of following your Dad and the main quest twisting in the wind).

Traits add subtle flavour but I wouldn't say they "characterize" your blank slate a great deal. Unless by selecting a trait you are able to produce a host of background information and associated character attachment out of it. For some people that seems to be really important to their roleplay but I have always kept stats separate from who I am (save for where stats affect choices I want to make).
 
korindabar said:
Walpknut said:
And even tought I liek the tutorial growing up in the Vault, there nto much you can do in that part to actualy affect yoru character, for example if you get into the fight with Butch and accidentaly kill him your character would start the thrid act in a Vault prison and it igves you certain boosts and penalties, or if he accepts the teachers offer to change his tests and then he rats him out he would start the game with the Overseer's favor. etc. New Vegas doen't give oyu a tutorial on how you grew up period, but it lets you select traits that lets you stablish yoru character as a person with different weakneses and strenghts, handicaps and etc. Thats still a little clunky but its a much better implementation of game mechanics.
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That quickly falls into the hole of, "Well, why can't I do X, Y, Z?". Options are always good but there are also realistic limitations (plot wise and design wise). And I know you're just providing an example but I some how doubt the overseer would throw you in a "vault prison". More than likely you would have been executed immediately or you would have to escape (leaving the MacGuffin of following your Dad and the main quest twisting in the wind).
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Another example, there is this JRPG game called Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne, it had very little budget but the story changed dependign on your actions in certain sequences, it didn't have vocie acting and the changes were pretty minor bbetween the cut scenes but it showed the changes.
To get around the Plot of following your dad, it could be solved easily, you have to escape, then the shinning oportunity comes, radroaches enter the Vault and cause Chaos, as yo uare escaping you find your dads friend corpse and the message about hsi escape, altering it to reflect that he wanted to either abandon you for being such a prick, or hoping the chaos caused by hsi escape would give the oportunity to escape, the rest of the game would continue the same except for changes in dialogue and some missions being automatically failed.
 
Walpknut said:
Another example, there is this JRPG game called Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne, it had very little budget but the story changed dependign on your actions in certain sequences, it didn't have vocie acting and the changes were pretty minor bbetween the cut scenes but it showed the changes.
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That must be one of the like 4 JRPGs that doesn't practically run on rails :-p

Walpknut said:
To get around the Plot of following your dad, it could be solved easily, you have to escape, then the shinning oportunity comes, radroaches enter the Vault and cause Chaos, as yo uare escaping you find your dads friend corpse and the message about hsi escape, altering it to reflect that he wanted to either abandon you for being such a prick, or hoping the chaos caused by hsi escape would give the oportunity to escape, the rest of the game would continue the same except for changes in dialogue and some missions being automatically failed.
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To allow for what you're proposing the whole main plot would need a rewrite most likely. And this may be why the main quest was ultimately somewhat linear. But I never expected a game to present me with 200 different ways to complete it, so F3's overall plot never caused me a problem. I am of the understanding that not every element of the story and what happens in the world is in my control.
 
Well nocturne is linear in its core, it has different endings and scenes play otu diferently btu you do the same actions in the main quest, altought it is a game that makes you focus on building your character properly too.

The problem with FO3 lacking chocies and concecuences is that thats what makes a fallout game a Fallout game, I can play linear games and have fun, I mean FO3 is fun the first time you play it, but after you play its predecesors and compare them FO3 is a terrible continuation, discarding a lot of the things that made playing Fallout games its own experience. Thats the problem with FO3. also the writting and the plot were very poorly done.
 
Hey Blatherscythe, did you join this forum just to act angry and start fights? You've been here just one day and that's all you've done. I can understand liking f3, I just joke about completely hating it mostly. I have a bit of a soft spot for it, it introducing me to the far superior other games and all. It's really just a game where you just turn your brain off and have fun.
 
Walpknut said:
Well nocturne is linear in its core, it has different endings and scenes play otu diferently btu you do the same actions in the main quest, altought it is a game that makes you focus on building your character properly too.
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Fallout 3 isn't completely remiss of this and the first time I beat the game I found the ending slides to have provided me a reasonable sense of satisfaction in the choices I made and how I generally had behaved (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7hCJhkxS1o). These slides were of course the "Good, neutral, evil" narrations with images related to several quest outcomes you were involved in. This is more than you could expect from most games (and even historically, Bethesda games).

Where this really started to go out the window was the Brotherhood of Steel expansion, which had you wake up three weeks later and embark on a quest to destroy the Enclave... which then 'ended' abruptly and left you to wander the wasteland again. There was a decent sense of 'finality' in Vanilla but BoS tossed it out the window (though it did serve it's purpose of unlocking the gameplay).

Walpknut said:
The problem with FO3 lacking chocies and concecuences is that thats what makes a fallout game a Fallout game, I can play linear games and have fun, I mean FO3 is fun the first time you play it, but after you play its predecesors and compare them FO3 is a terrible continuation, discarding a lot of the things that made playing Fallout games its own experience. Thats the problem with FO3. also the writting and the plot were very poorly done.
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And this is a concern that is echo'd here quite frequenly. The lack of choices makes it very 'unFallout' but didn't necessarily make it a 'bad game'. Bethesda made Fallout 3 within the expectations one could have, extrapolating from their handling of TES. The main story and many of the quests have few options. The stories are written (for the most part) independently and have limited outcomes. Their non-linearity really comes in the form of compartmentalized content that can be accessed at any point in the game during free wandering. Compared to TES, I would say F3 is a large departure from the historic linearity they're comfortable with. NV perhaps dwarfs it in choice/consequence but that is something that has always been in the purview of Obsidian (and the GECK entries for quests and their consequential outcomes must be a design hell).

But that's not what this thread is about, this is about the story arc of New Vegas and specifically the "act 1" sequence, which I felt was poorly handled.
 
The first act of a story is generaly the shortest one, it serves the propouse of introduce the main character and hsi motivation, the most important part of a story is the second act, and it is almost always the longest act, and New Vegas more than delviers on this one.
Fallout 3 has a loooooong first act, one woudl think such a long frist act in a open ended agem woudl give you chocies to alter it, but there it is just needlessly long, it could have skipped your birth to your teenage years easily, you wouldn't miss anything and it owuld save you like half and hour.
 
Walpknut said:
The first act of a story is generaly the shortest one, it serves the propouse of introduce the main character and hsi motivation, the most important part of a story is the second act, and it is almost always the longest act, and New Vegas more than delviers on this one.
Fallout 3 has a loooooong first act, one woudl think such a long frist act in a open ended agem woudl give you chocies to alter it, but there it is just needlessly long, it could have skipped your birth to your teenage years easily, you wouldn't miss anything and it owuld save you like half and hour.
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What it could possibly have needed was an option to "skip" ahead to where your Father escapes the vault and Amata is waking you up... which actually I wanted to comment on earlier:

Walpknut said:
I liek the tutorial growing up in the Vault, there nto much you can do in that part to actualy affect yoru character
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Technically, how you handle your exit from the vault effects what happens when you return later. Whether you killed the overseer or certain people, etc.

Along the same lines, NV could have benefited from a better beginning 'hook'. Whether that came in the form of a pre-headshot gaming sequence or not. The sequence could always be skippable, if ultimately the choices you made in it didn't have major impacts on the rest of the game. It would be like getting teleported to the ending of vault 101 where you confirm your stats.

I am mostly in agreeance with the video this fellow did. I have a few other gripes about NV's story and the "immershun" which really made the game a tough pill to swallow for me.
 
The storytellign of Fallout is a disaster if you go by the basic forms of narrative. The thign with Fallout is that the narrative is established on how you interact with the world, the game presents you a series of situations, and is yoru decision how they play, if didn't care about most characters thats your experience with the story, thast the piint of Fallout, not just follow a 3 arc structure because most stories follow it, the third act of Fallout can be your character dying from the FEV the enclave spreads through the land, it can be you selling out your Vault to the Master, or just leting it die, it can be just you getting killed and abandoning the game altogether.
 
So what there isn't too much of backstory of our courier, i always use my imagination to fill his story. my courier was born in NCR territory. Grow up somewhere near shandy sands, always prefered more peaceful aproach (good-natured trail), but since this is dangerous world he got small training in guns(guns skill tagged), and so on, and so on.

I know that moders gamers prefer to have everything told to them, and do for them, but sometimes it's good to use imagination.
Aftell all, its our choices that define courier and his/her history/
 
I also felt weird when I watched Gamespot's FNV review.

The narrator mentioned that the game was buggy and all (which Beth game isn't), and I recall him saying that even though the game was good, the FO3 story was better. Really?

I mean, from being raised in a vault and almost never having someone mention it again, other than "lololol u wer born in a vault!" was a pretty bad story. FNV gave you a motivation, believable characters, and a world that wasn't just several types of monsters scattered around the map.

I really wonder what the hell is wrong with people these days.

edit: was gamespot review, not IGN.
 
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