BIS forum tidbits

[Briosafreak]

Time for a new round of developers posts on the BIS feedback forum regarding Fallout3.
First J.E. Sawyer giving a lesson to those that think Fallout3 will be second rate in comparision to BIS former and never released project with the codename Jefferson:
<blockquote>Doomsayer:We know that VB will have less areas than Fallout 2,</blockquote>
<blockquote>Time / # of Areas = Time per area </blockquote>
<blockquote>less text and adventuring than Jefferson</blockquote>
<blockquote>You're making comparisons to a game that was never announced, much less released.[...]Yeah, but what value is the comparison without seeing the effect of n words in the game? The King James Bible also has more words than Jefferson and Van Buren put together. Saying "less words than" doesn't mean much unless the the thing being compared had insufficent text.</blockquote>
<blockquote>and it has a smaller development time as well.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Jefferson's development time included ground-up development of an engine and all of its tools.</blockquote>
Now Sawyer on character customization, following these ideas we posted earlier:
<blockquote>More important than the afro (which really is reasonably sized, not cartoonish "Afro Thunder" style), IMO, are the presence of greaser and beehive hairstyles.</blockquote>
And Damien "Puuk" Foletto had this to add:
<blockquote> Oh yeah, pretty much any hat you can think of will be in. Someone also mentioned tattoos; I'm not sure if it's in, but it has been discussed.</blockquote>
And Sawyer again:
<blockquote>Ponytails and some long hairstyles are animated, but a short hairstyle is static.</blockquote>
Link: BIS feedback forum

 

[Bradylama]

;_;

I'll end up spending an hour just customizing my character.

 

[JJ86]

As long as the replayability factor is still as high or higher than Fallout2, the size doesn't matter. I don't count myself in the category of "speed gamers" when I play games like Fallout or Arcanum. At most I put in 4 hours at a stretch and am not out for the most efficient playing style. It still sounds like the non-linearity of VB will be in place.

 

[Azael]

Damn, they know my weak spot. Now I'll spend countless of time just trying to figure out what kind of hat goes best with the leather armor.

I also think that quality and replayability is more important than length of the game. A game that is too long, might even be less tempting to play again since you only have so much time to put in. Arcanum almost was like that, but I guess that was just as much a result of the dreaded BMC mines.

 

[JJ86]

Arcanum does get a little too huge. I enjoy the variability of places. So that time of day influences NPC behavior. It would be even better with weather effects or other things influencing NPC behavior. Obviously that type of variability is time consuming to implement but would be incredible. I would rather see that than a large empty world. Four Fallout2 sized cities would be enough with that increased amount of detail.