Radwarrior
First time out of the vault
I'm new, flame me if ya gotta.
Dear Bethesda.
Congratulations on your purchase of the Fallout license. Fallout 3 has been the Holy Grail of pc games for many of us die-hard Fallout fans for years. There’s just never been a game quite like it, ever. Well except maybe Wastelands, but who remembers that these days?
So now the question remains, what will you do with it? You have all sorts of options available to you now that you have not gone into full production yet. Now is the time where the decisions you make will really count and bring you either profit or failure or something in between down the road.
I’m not anybody special, just a fan of the franchise basically. One of those people who went without sleep for weeks playing one of the last truly high quality rpg’s to be made. Like most Americans, I have a very short attention span, and most of the games I play I never even finish. But Fallout was different. I finished both of them and then played them again, and again. I tried to explore every single inch of the game because it was so interesting and engaging and just.. well.. Fun. Most likely my humble plea will simply vanish into the void of the internet unheard, and unconsidered by the people I am really trying so reasonably to address. I can accept that, but I must make the attempt to speak my mind on this matter because I know that I’ll never be able to hold my peace otherwise.
Let’s examine your options. 1.You can either make Fallout 3, 2. another game in the Fallout world, or 3. you can sit on the license like interplay and try to use it as a bargaining chip. You seem like an innovative and idealistic company so I doubt you’ve even considered option 3, and bless you for that.
I think that your best option to make the most profit, and most importantly, to make the best and greatest contribution to the pc gaming market is to make Fallout 3. That having been said though, you need to keep something in mind. This might sound kind of preachy, but Fallout isn’t really yours. I don’t care what the lawyers have to say about intellectual property. You own the rights to a creative endeavor that you did not invent.
I know you want to make the game innovative; you want to update it, and make it something that fits within your ideal of how a crpg should be. You’ve had great success with Morrowwind and maybe you want to try and add some of that to Fallout. Morrowwind is yours. You invented it. It’s your franchise. If I bought the license to it and turned it into a flight sim or an RTS don’t you think that some people would be upset? Yourself included?
Fallout 3 is a part of a franchise that has generated some of the most loyal and well.. to be honest insane fans of all time. But wouldn’t you be a bit unsettled if you’d been jerked around by a game developer the way we were? We wanted to buy the game. If we could have pre-ordered it on day one of production a lot of us would have done it, especially now in hindsight. But we never even got the chance, I won’t go into the specifics and details of what happened with Interplay, because most people already know the story.
If you announced tomorrow that you would be staying true to the Fallout universe, with turn based combat, the special system, and isometric top down, you would have a Legion of fans breaking out the credit cards and wanting to know where to sign. You would also gain the loyalty and respect of a large community within the pc-gaming world. You might not think that means anything, but have you ever seen what happens when you dare to suggest that blizzard has done something wrong to a blizzard fan boy? You get punched in the mouth.
You can even innovate a little bit, but keep it turned based with S.P.E.C.I.A.L. If you want to add some player races in besides human. Ok, cool. I’m sure you have a lot of other ideas. If you stick really close to the Fallout template that we all know and love, so be it. Make your mark. But don’t go to far and call it Fallout 3. Keep Master of Orion 3 in your mind as you make the game. That game flopped and the company died, because they didn’t listen to the game’s fans. We know what we want, we know what we want to buy.
I mentioned another option. Making another game in the Fallout universe that isn’t Fallout 3. It’s been done before; I think Fallout Tactics was a great game, that crap that came out on ps2 or whatever I don’t really count as Fallout. This is really the best opportunity to experiment with new graphic engines and perspectives and maybe even rp systems. Please don’t, but if you feel like you must, then go ahead. A Fallout game that isn’t Fallout 3 done the way you like it is something I could live with. I guess. If it’s good. I’m not really enthusiastic about it however and might not buy it.
The thing to really consider with this second option is that here you can be as innovative as you can risk. Go hog wild. If you give us Fallout 3 that is true to form, most of us will become loyal t-shirt wearing bethesdan’s and will buy whatever you make. Hell we’ll even try to get into 1st person fantasy games. Look at how we blush and sigh when we talk about black isle (R.I.P BIS FOR LIFE!) The key though is making both. Why stop with just one Fallout title? Just give us Fallout 3 the way we want it. Give us what we should have had all those years before that monster Herve destroyed pc gaming.
If you make Fallout 3 in the style that we rabid fans are begging for. You can guarantee sales and lots of them. You could even bypass publishing and sell it directly and increase your profits even further (oh wait, your doing that already). None of us would blink at ordering this game online. However, if you do not I would like to point out the most likely set of events that would occur.
Rather than large amounts of pre-orders, you will see most of us fans closely watching the screen shots and reading reviews. We’ll talk to people that have bought the game and ask them about it before we buy it. All the way constantly knocking it to everyone we can reach. Instead of the instant large number of sales, good reviews and happy customers, you’ll get a slow moving product and a lot of people who will hate you like they currently hate Interplay. Look where Interplay is now Bethesda. This is what happens when you take a crap on your fans.
You can’t really expect us not to behave like this. Look at it this way, if your girlfriend dumped you to be with someone else because he had a nicer car, would you go around to your friends and tell them what a great girl she is, and how much you wronged her. No, you'd call her a psycho ho-bag and reach for the jack daniels like the rest of us.
It all looks pretty simple to me. I really just hope you guys can come through for us. We don't care about graphics, we liked the dark feel, the gameplay, the combat system, and the story. Graphics can bite us.
Dear Bethesda.
Congratulations on your purchase of the Fallout license. Fallout 3 has been the Holy Grail of pc games for many of us die-hard Fallout fans for years. There’s just never been a game quite like it, ever. Well except maybe Wastelands, but who remembers that these days?
So now the question remains, what will you do with it? You have all sorts of options available to you now that you have not gone into full production yet. Now is the time where the decisions you make will really count and bring you either profit or failure or something in between down the road.
I’m not anybody special, just a fan of the franchise basically. One of those people who went without sleep for weeks playing one of the last truly high quality rpg’s to be made. Like most Americans, I have a very short attention span, and most of the games I play I never even finish. But Fallout was different. I finished both of them and then played them again, and again. I tried to explore every single inch of the game because it was so interesting and engaging and just.. well.. Fun. Most likely my humble plea will simply vanish into the void of the internet unheard, and unconsidered by the people I am really trying so reasonably to address. I can accept that, but I must make the attempt to speak my mind on this matter because I know that I’ll never be able to hold my peace otherwise.
Let’s examine your options. 1.You can either make Fallout 3, 2. another game in the Fallout world, or 3. you can sit on the license like interplay and try to use it as a bargaining chip. You seem like an innovative and idealistic company so I doubt you’ve even considered option 3, and bless you for that.
I think that your best option to make the most profit, and most importantly, to make the best and greatest contribution to the pc gaming market is to make Fallout 3. That having been said though, you need to keep something in mind. This might sound kind of preachy, but Fallout isn’t really yours. I don’t care what the lawyers have to say about intellectual property. You own the rights to a creative endeavor that you did not invent.
I know you want to make the game innovative; you want to update it, and make it something that fits within your ideal of how a crpg should be. You’ve had great success with Morrowwind and maybe you want to try and add some of that to Fallout. Morrowwind is yours. You invented it. It’s your franchise. If I bought the license to it and turned it into a flight sim or an RTS don’t you think that some people would be upset? Yourself included?
Fallout 3 is a part of a franchise that has generated some of the most loyal and well.. to be honest insane fans of all time. But wouldn’t you be a bit unsettled if you’d been jerked around by a game developer the way we were? We wanted to buy the game. If we could have pre-ordered it on day one of production a lot of us would have done it, especially now in hindsight. But we never even got the chance, I won’t go into the specifics and details of what happened with Interplay, because most people already know the story.
If you announced tomorrow that you would be staying true to the Fallout universe, with turn based combat, the special system, and isometric top down, you would have a Legion of fans breaking out the credit cards and wanting to know where to sign. You would also gain the loyalty and respect of a large community within the pc-gaming world. You might not think that means anything, but have you ever seen what happens when you dare to suggest that blizzard has done something wrong to a blizzard fan boy? You get punched in the mouth.
You can even innovate a little bit, but keep it turned based with S.P.E.C.I.A.L. If you want to add some player races in besides human. Ok, cool. I’m sure you have a lot of other ideas. If you stick really close to the Fallout template that we all know and love, so be it. Make your mark. But don’t go to far and call it Fallout 3. Keep Master of Orion 3 in your mind as you make the game. That game flopped and the company died, because they didn’t listen to the game’s fans. We know what we want, we know what we want to buy.
I mentioned another option. Making another game in the Fallout universe that isn’t Fallout 3. It’s been done before; I think Fallout Tactics was a great game, that crap that came out on ps2 or whatever I don’t really count as Fallout. This is really the best opportunity to experiment with new graphic engines and perspectives and maybe even rp systems. Please don’t, but if you feel like you must, then go ahead. A Fallout game that isn’t Fallout 3 done the way you like it is something I could live with. I guess. If it’s good. I’m not really enthusiastic about it however and might not buy it.
The thing to really consider with this second option is that here you can be as innovative as you can risk. Go hog wild. If you give us Fallout 3 that is true to form, most of us will become loyal t-shirt wearing bethesdan’s and will buy whatever you make. Hell we’ll even try to get into 1st person fantasy games. Look at how we blush and sigh when we talk about black isle (R.I.P BIS FOR LIFE!) The key though is making both. Why stop with just one Fallout title? Just give us Fallout 3 the way we want it. Give us what we should have had all those years before that monster Herve destroyed pc gaming.
If you make Fallout 3 in the style that we rabid fans are begging for. You can guarantee sales and lots of them. You could even bypass publishing and sell it directly and increase your profits even further (oh wait, your doing that already). None of us would blink at ordering this game online. However, if you do not I would like to point out the most likely set of events that would occur.
Rather than large amounts of pre-orders, you will see most of us fans closely watching the screen shots and reading reviews. We’ll talk to people that have bought the game and ask them about it before we buy it. All the way constantly knocking it to everyone we can reach. Instead of the instant large number of sales, good reviews and happy customers, you’ll get a slow moving product and a lot of people who will hate you like they currently hate Interplay. Look where Interplay is now Bethesda. This is what happens when you take a crap on your fans.
You can’t really expect us not to behave like this. Look at it this way, if your girlfriend dumped you to be with someone else because he had a nicer car, would you go around to your friends and tell them what a great girl she is, and how much you wronged her. No, you'd call her a psycho ho-bag and reach for the jack daniels like the rest of us.
It all looks pretty simple to me. I really just hope you guys can come through for us. We don't care about graphics, we liked the dark feel, the gameplay, the combat system, and the story. Graphics can bite us.
