I'm not bothering to respond to anything that isn't directed specifically to me, just because my responses went on long enough as it is. I'll respond (maybe) more tomorrow afternoon.
Brother None said:
You do know Fallout was originally based on GURPS, right? That SPECIAL was reconstituted based on PnP strengths? That every major Fallout designer names pen and paper games as one of the most important influences on Fallout? That Leonard Boyarsky has said "I don’t know how I would have felt about making FO3 anything but isometric and turn based"
Yes, I knew all that.
Considering Fallout was in fact designed to be a pen and paper emulation, you're going to have to run by me nice and slow why all of us and the original designers of Fallout are wrong and it's "about a lot more than these core game mechanics". Apart from the setting, I can't think of a single facet of Fallout's design that didn't tie in directly with the core game mechanics.
I'm not saying that the original designers are wrong. I'm not even saying it's wrong to view those things as decidedly Fallout, or to admire Fallout for those things. I'm simply saying that Fallout transcends simple game mechanics. You seem to be saying that the game mechanics are the heart of what makes Fallout as compelling and great of a game as it is, and I guess that's where we
completely differ on opinions, because, while I did love Fallout 1 and 2, and Fallout 1 is still probably my all time favorite game (or at the very least in the top 3), it ain't the fond memories of turn-based combat or helicopter viewpoints that gets my dick hard about it.
Hell, the whole statement is ludicrous. How can a game not be primarily about its core game mechanics? They're called core game mechanics for a reason.
The focus of "Core Game Mechanics" really should be on "Game Mechanics" more than anything. We're talking about game mechanics here. As somebody who has personally spent hundreds of hours over the past decade and a half designing role playing games, both of the tabletop and the text-based online variety, with probably hundreds, maybe thousands of pages done up on tons of original game systems, I know a bit about good design philosophy for role playing games. And unless you're one of those mindless powergaming dipshits who wouldn't know a deep character from your +3 power sword of supremacy, who are just one step short of being a console FPS playing idiots practicing your dolphin diving techniques, you'd know that the whole fucking point of good game design is for the game mechanics to do exactly what they need to do in order to solve problems and then get the fuck out of the way and be invisible.
To say that Fallout is about its game mechanics is selling it way, way short. Especially amongst a crowd like this, who spends as much time bitching about the precise look of the super mutants as they do the lack of turn-based combat system, like one of those comic book fanboys bitching because Peter Parker's web is organic in the movie and it's the end-of-the-fucking-world because of it. There's a lot more to this property than game mechanics, and even if we can agree that the core to Fallout is emulating pen-and-paper RPG's, there are plenty of ways to design those types of games, and not all of them deal with turn-based, stat-heavy combat.
In my opinion, the more transparent the statistics of the game are, the better off we are as true role players. I mean, a video game is all numbers and statistics anyway, so just because you can't see your hit points (for instance) doesn't mean they're not there.
Now give me a good reason why these type of games have no "right" to exist, why inevitably shiny graphics will replace headachey numbers?
First, I want to make it clear that in no way do I believe that games like Fallout 1 and 2 have no right to exist. They do, and I enjoyed the hell out of them. But I think we can all agree that Fallout 3 is not going to be anything like the first two when it comes to "core game mechanics." You are of the belief that, because of this, the whole game is ruined, with no hope of retaining any of the old glory of the original Fallout. I believe that it's going to be a very different game experience, but that it's more than possible to retain the real core of what actually matters to Fallout, even with a completely first-person shooter-esque set of core game mechanics.
Do I think that Bethesda is going to pull that off? I haven't made my mind up on that yet. But the philosophy itself, which is what I'm arguing for, isn't inherently flawed simply because it pulls away from the roots of old-school Dungeons and Dragons-esque pen and paper RPG's.
Black said:
Adding to what BN said- I think there was some info that Fallout was supposed to be set in medieval times or something like that. But still with tb combat and with isometric view.
See that? Mechanics had higher priority than the setting.
If we're arguing that designer intention is more important to a game (or a movie or book or story or whatever) than the game (or movie, yadda yadda) itself, then that's basically taking the stance that what the teacher teaches is more important than what the student learns. I don't agree with this philosophy at all, but it does put you and I at sort of an impasse philosophically speaking. I don't really give a flying fuck what the developers intended for Fallout, because while I adore the game, I care more about what I took from it than what the Developer was thinking when he made it. I don't really find quoting developers to be very good evidence against my points, honestly. But like I said, if you believe the opposite there's really no way to argue it effectively either way.
Mord_Sith said:
I pity your future lad, if you believe that the mind's eye can be replaced by a pixel perfect world you're sadly mistaken, for this reason, a good mind's eye can emulate things that a picture cannot, right down to the smell if it's good enough.
As a writer, I don't discount the imagination whatsoever. But my point was simply that there will come a point where graphics will become so photorealistic that you simply won't need your imagination to see these things, just like you don't need your imagination to see your real-life surroundings. Obviously, short of a Matrix-esque rig that can completely fool all of your senses, the imagination will always be important, but as powerful as your imagination can be, people imagine different things given different stimuli, and while that might be great for horror games, some stuff can simply be seen without needing your imagination to work overdrive to compensate for shitty graphics.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not big on focusing so much attention on the top of the line graphics in new games, and I do see it as a failing that so many game companies focus all their attention on the look of their game and completely neglect the real important things, like storyline and plot and characters (and yes, even game mechanics). But if there wasn't a power to letting the game do the work for you visually, then what is the fucking point of playing a
videogame in the first place? Why watch a movie, when you can simply stick to a book, if your imagination is so damn perfect and anything else is stupid and unnecessary?
To write off the power of letting someone else
show you something, rather than simply describing it to you and letting you come up with it for yourself, is not just faulty logic, but it's downright fucking stupid.
Imagine a toaster, bread in the bins, about 3/4 of the way through the toasting cycle, right now you can distinctly pinpoint a familiar smell if you tried, you could imagine the faint glow and the heat coming from the chambers where the toast is currently being toasted, but above all else, it is so very close to the real thing (if you're good enough with your imagination) that if you closed your eyes and forgot that it was an imagined toaster you could swear it was right in front of you.
And while that's some mighty fine prose, I never saw Fallout really pay a hell of a lot of attention to scents in either of its two games, and while I know there was some things described in such ways, I think that if you removed the few times they really mentioned smells in such a vivid way from both games, you wouldn't even notice.
I play games because I enjoy the stories, I love verbose explanations in text which allows my mind's eye to take over and create what it believes to be what the text is describing.
And while that's nice, it in no way takes advantage of your computer monitor. And I'm not saying that everything needs to, and that text-based RPG's don't have their place (I host my own text-based campaign weekly), because they do. But to piss and moan because some people actually want to take advantage of your computer monitor and graphics card during gameplay like it's fucking sacrilegious and exists purely for people who are morons and don't like to think is just idiotic. Even if it's Fallout.
fedaykin said:
Tyshalle, do you realize that you are confusing game mechanics (PnP, turn-based combat etc) with the setting (post-apocalyptic world)?
Actually, I'm not. Go re-read my initial post and hopefully you'll see otherwise.
How, then, can you claim that Fallout will not suffer from the removal of these mechanics?
I'm not really saying that it won't, honestly. I enjoyed Oblivion, a lot, but I'm not blind to its many, many flaws, including the big ones that have to deal with storytelling quality. So I have a lot of doubts about the potential of Fallout 3. Bethesda removing Fallout from its roots so they can do something more akin to what they've done in the past does lead me to believe that the game could be potentially very, very bad. But I'm not stupid enough to believe that it absolutely will, or that altering the core game mechanics will necessarily wipe out any chances for it to feel like Fallout (at least in terms of what Fallout is to me, which really has very little to do with game mechanics at all).
It seems to me that you are advocating the creation of what is called a spin-off. Spin-offs are not inherently bad, but if Fallout 3 is going to be a spin-off, why pretend that it is a true sequel, and not just call it an FPS in the Fallout world?
Because calling it "Fallout: The First Person Shooter" would be selling it way fucking short, IMO. The game has serious potential to be a great role playing game. It also has decent potential to be a good continuation of the Fallout setting. It even has the potential to
feel like Fallout, regardless of what game mechanics they choose for it. These are the things that matter, at least to me. Staying true to the themes of Fallout itself, as a setting, in story-telling quality and narrative and the characterization of the world. Not in game mechanics and statistics and yadda yadda yadda horseshit.
Honestly, whenever I hear somebody say that their chief complaint is that they're trying to label this as a sequel rather than a spin-off, I just roll my eyes. The reason that Tactics is a spin-off is because it's a tactical strategy game, completely combat-focused. The reason Brotherhood of Steel is a spin-off is because it's... well, whatever the fuck you call that abomination. Fallout 3 is a role playing game. Maybe it doesn't have a third-person perspective. Maybe it's not turn-based. But it's aiming to be a role playing game, and from what the developers tell us, they're looking to make it much closer to Fallout in role playing quality than they are to Oblivion. Based on that, I think that they have every right to call this a sequel, rather than a spin-off.
