Chris Avellone talks Fallout 3

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Brother None

This ghoul has seen it all
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As PC Gamer UK mentioned in its podcast (see one tick below), it's hard to get a straight answer from a developer on the game made by the company he is indirectly working for. Still, for what it's worth, Chris Avellone gives his opinion on Fallout 3 (or at least minor portions of it) in his blog.<blockquote>[Dislikes] Didn't like not being able to kill Amata or Andy the Robot at the outset because I hated them both. I didn't like that the first potential companion was a bad karma companion and expensive, but then the twin goals of being an **** and scrounging up a thousand caps became bait and a challenge in trying to get him - when I got Jericho, I felt like I'd earned him as a companion. I think Repair became too valuable as a skill, but it's better than the special case it was in Fallout 1 and 2, so I'd rather that than it remain a broken skill (like Doctor in F2). Maybe because I'm approaching it from the development end, I didn't care, but I think the level cap turned a number of people off, as did not being able to play after and continue the game until Broken Steel came out. Some of the locations I think broke the 4th wall (Dunwich, which I actually enjoyed playing, just not the premise).

[Likes] Opening immersion and re-introducing you into the Fallout world. Fallout 1 and 2 had consistently broken or special case skills that were rectified in F3 (for example, Repair - and Doctor vs. First Aid in Fallout 2 became broken without a time limit, so Medicine was clearly an improvement). Fast Travel. Felt my skills mattered in general. (...) The Arlington Cemetery actually hit me pretty hard, and as a location it really drove home the futility of war to me - just seeing all those graves with Washington DC stretching out behind it made me feel really bad. Loved firing my combat shotgun into a bus with 5 ghouls trapped on the Dupont Circle freeway below and watching the whole screen erupt in fire. Consistently being rewarded for exploring the environment - there was always at least three things to see on the horizon that you wanted to go check out. I didn't think I would like Liberty Prime, but the Iron Giant aspect worked for me and made me do a 180.</blockquote>Thanks Starwars.
 
MCA said:
Felt my skills mattered in general.
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One of my biggest gripes with Fallout 3 was that skills really didn't matter and only determined the amount of loot you could get. I hope New Vegas isn't going that way, but I feel pretty confident it won't.
 
I never thought a neighborhood filled with land mines would be a good adventure locale and I ate my words, loved the juxtaposition of real world mundane locations and their change into dungeons (Campgrounds, Springvale School, Super Duper Mart).
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I think these are pretty good actually now that I think about it. I enjoyed Super Duper Mart for example. But the even in more unique locations, the gameplay gets a bit too repetetive. The landmine town was also pretty fun to play the first time around.

The Pitt DLC, especially the opening vista crossing the bridge, is incredible.
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I wouldn't call it incredible, but I do think the Pitt is the best that Fallout 3 has to offer. There's some retarded stuff in there but overall I quite enjoyed it, thought the atmosphere was great also.
 
I am a little affraid of this exploration thing, it already disturbed me in Morrowind, where there was already a lot of quests to do in every direction and maybe as much generic tombs, but at least the main quest keep the whole coherent.
Oblivion, after I was out of jail, I felt I had no incentives to go further, and had to stop, like i already had beaten the game.
I can't say fallout 3 open world convinced me either, I only visited the places that were necessary for the main quest and the power armor.
I am not very much into tourism of the Wasteland, and don't feel like killing all the nest of bad raiders that haven't done anything to me yet but maybe thats just me...
 
I agree with most of that except the exploding cars, Liberty Prime, unlimited and unpunished fast travel, the barricade apologism, and the idea that there is anything to like about Mothership Zeta.

Probably the opposite of how he started his blog, though. Instead of every bad thing being balanced by a positive, I think that most of the good stuff in Fallout 3 felt like it got to a certain level of quality and then they went "Well that's good enough" so they stopped before it could reach its potential.
Like the radio: Yeah it reacts to you, but it presents a very black and white shade of morality, it's highly repetitive, it's focused squarely on what's going on with you and nobody else, and worst of all it's incredibly buggy ("learning" about canturbury commons about 500 times after I've already finished the quest, etc)
 
Starwars said:
I think these are pretty good actually now that I think about it. I enjoyed Super Duper Mart for example. But the even in more unique locations, the gameplay gets a bit too repetetive. The landmine town was also pretty fun to play the first time around.
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Those are by far the best areas in the game, but they're generally packed to the front of the game and very few when compared to the samey subway tunnels, sewers, office buildings, and caverns. You come across, say, the nuka cola plant, and you go "Wow, this will be great! A cola plant refitted into a dungeon!" then you go inside and it's like "Oh, this place again."
 
bhlaab said:
Those are by far the best areas in the game, but they're generally packed to the front of the game and very few when compared to the samey subway tunnels, sewers, office buildings, and caverns. You come across, say, the nuka cola plant, and you go "Wow, this will be great! A cola plant refitted into a dungeon!" then you go inside and it's like "Oh, this place again."
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A lot of it was made around the first initial area. I hated that they mentioned Megaton and showed that off, cause obviously people are going to go for the home so they can store stuff.

One place I enjoyed was the National Guard Armory. Found it after I beat the game (reload save to explore more) and enjoyed the combat.

But a lot of the places get samey after awhile.
 
Sander said:
MCA said:
Felt my skills mattered in general.
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One of my biggest gripes with Fallout 3 was that skills really didn't matter and only determined the amount of loot you could get. I hope New Vegas isn't going that way, but I feel pretty confident it won't.
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It probably won't be much different from Fallout 3 in this regard. You aren't going to see critical failures or anything like that. It would be nice if they increase the impact of skill in the "hardcore" mode, though.
 
yeah I think a major problem with Fallout 3 is the fact that they made the place too big. Instead of having a lot of stuff that was generic and redundant, they should have gone with a smaller area with unique, memorable, and chalk full of personality.
 
That's why I prefered Point Lookout. The story was rubbish but the areas were memorable and because it was smaller they didn't have to fill it with generic samey crap.
 
But did they really have to make a garbage pile a location on the map?

MCA said:
The Arlington Cemetery actually hit me pretty hard, and as a location it really drove home the futility of war to me - just seeing all those graves with Washington DC stretching out behind it made me feel really bad.
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Which were compensated by the nuclear destruction of Megaton which barely an ass cared about, and the fact that Fallout 3 makes it clear that 'xplosions are teh funney!' .
 
All respect to MCA, but fast travel was rubbish. In FO1 & 2 there was the map, but it wasn't really "fast travel" and you could still have random encounters. In FO3 you just zipped from place to place.. a game mechanic designed for today's "Mountain Dew" generation.
 
rcorporon said:
All respect to MCA, but fast travel was rubbish. In FO1 & 2 there was the map, but it wasn't really "fast travel" and you could still have random encounters. In FO3 you just zipped from place to place.. a game mechanic designed for today's "Mountain Dew" generation.
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Yeah, if New Vegas doesn't correct that by adding random enemy encounters during fast travel it will be a major flaw in my eyes.
 
Avellone is too high-profile to say what he really thinks of a high-profile title. Hence, "it is good for what it is".
 
MCA has always been fairly positive about Fallout 3 when asked. This blog post is really pointless, not just because he's currently in Bethesda's employ but also because both his positives and negatives are almost all nitpicky, peripheral stuff. He avoids talking about writing, core mechanics, combat and other fairly vital stuff pretty much completely, or only in small chunks.

So meh.
 
MCA said:
Seeing Dogmeat on fire, and being so tough that he didn't even care that he was on fire.
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Haha. Ha.

bhlaab said:
rcorporon said:
All respect to MCA, but fast travel was rubbish. In FO1 & 2 there was the map, but it wasn't really "fast travel" and you could still have random encounters. In FO3 you just zipped from place to place.. a game mechanic designed for today's "Mountain Dew" generation.
Click to expand...

Yeah, if New Vegas doesn't correct that by adding random enemy encounters during fast travel it will be a major flaw in my eyes.
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I don't know what it is, but I would too love to see the red dotted line and cross make a comeback. It's almost as if I would prefer that to, say, good dialog trees.
 
<blockquote>I didn't think I would like Liberty Prime, but the Iron Giant aspect worked for me and made me do a 180.</blockquote>

This requires more support. Where's the innocent child teaching Liberty Prime to use his powers for peace?
 
If Bethesdas writters would just have the skill like those who made the Iron Gigant. Yeah ... I love the movie. Liberty prime could have been so much more ... for example allowing the player to repair it, eventualy using his repair skill and science skill as check. If very high you give him such inteligence that Liberty Prime is asking the meaning of violance and acting rather as pacifist then a anti-communist destroyer. Of course evnetualy if your skills are good enolugh with a dialogue option to convince him that a fight is the needed action.
 
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