Emil comments on V.A.T.S.

[Xenophile]

Of course, Black Isle made much better games than Bethesda..

And I didn't say anything to the contrary, did I?

But let me ask you this. Did you need to read the forums and find out how the combat worked down to the last modifier to eventually play and enjoy the first Fallout?

Fallout was the first game in the series. Nobody cared about it until it came out being ... great. That kind of greatness is not a result of coincidence, it is a result of a tremendous amount of thought put into every little detail. It set the precedent for the series, drew attention to it, and encouraged deep examination.

That's why the fans, now, obsess about every little detail of Fallout 3.

That's a load of shit.. I was greatly anticipating Fallout before it came out. Many of my friends at the time were too. Now the game was good.. so we were right to anticipate. But to claim it was some super sleeper hit is not accurate in the least. Sure it didn't sell HUGE.. but most RPG players I knew were looking forward to it at the time.

 

[Brother None]

Aye. And it caught a lot of flak over expectations it did not meet re: it being a "sequel" (of sorts) to Wasteland.

Regardless, the point stands: Fallout 1 was an original, Fallout 2 didn't change anything, Fallout 3 is changing the mechanics. So using Fallout 1 to argue it doesn't make sense to ask details about Fallout 3 mechanics changes is just putting the cart in front of the horse.

 

[Eyenixon]

Of course, Black Isle made much better games than Bethesda..

And I didn't say anything to the contrary, did I?

But let me ask you this. Did you need to read the forums and find out how the combat worked down to the last modifier to eventually play and enjoy the first Fallout?

Fallout was the first game in the series. Nobody cared about it until it came out being ... great. That kind of greatness is not a result of coincidence, it is a result of a tremendous amount of thought put into every little detail. It set the precedent for the series, drew attention to it, and encouraged deep examination.

That's why the fans, now, obsess about every little detail of Fallout 3.

That's a load of shit.. I was greatly anticipating Fallout before it came out. Many of my friends at the time were too. Now the game was good.. so we were right to anticipate. But to claim it was some super sleeper hit is not accurate in the least. Sure it didn't sell HUGE.. but most RPG players I knew were looking forward to it at the time.

The largest difference being that the original Fallout did not have the same degree of marketing, hype or even experienced developers as many sequels to popular games have.

From a company such as Black Isle that had yet to truly prove themselves, Fallout was certainly a surprise hit.

Of course there were people looking forward to it, there were people looking forward to Warcraft before its release as well, but they weren't being swayed by the name or the ads - instead they expected an experience similar to Dune 2, or in Fallout's case, perhaps something similar to GURPS. I'd certainly say that it came out of the blue and only its quality made it stand out, at least in comparison to the majority of other games that sell in the large part due to the marketing behind them.

 

[Ausir]

From a company such as Black Isle that had yet to truly prove themselves, Fallout was certainly a surprise hit.

The name "Black Isle" wasn't used until Fallout 2.

 

[Eyenixon]

Well I learned something new then.
However that just supports my point to a further extent.

 

[Pope Viper]

Yet it did have Interplay, which at the time was a fairly significant player.

BTW - Love your sig.

 

[shihonage]

That's a load of shit.. I was greatly anticipating Fallout before it came out. Many of my friends at the time were too. Now the game was good.. so we were right to anticipate. But to claim it was some super sleeper hit is not accurate in the least. Sure it didn't sell HUGE.. but most RPG players I knew were looking forward to it at the time.

Fallout was initially regarded as a B-project at Interplay. While RPG fans may have been following it, the mainstream haven't... much. Fallout3 has gone well into mainstream - the levels of exposure are incomparable.

Of course this is just arguing on the edges of the segue into my main argument, which remains - Fallout 1 established canon for Fallout series. It was a great game with no previous canon. Its quality was not by chance - it was a product of a lot of thought.

Seeing a number of obvious changes in how Fallout3 approaches Fallout's established and mostly-working gameplay mechanics, naturally prompts close examination of those changes on part of fans, who don't want to witness the complete loss of Fallout gameplay feel.

 

[Ausir]

Aye. And it caught a lot of flak over expectations it did not meet re: it being a "sequel" (of sorts) to Wasteland.

Or the expectations of those who followed it initially because they were GURPS fans.

 

[Moving Target]

There are GURPS fans?!?

 

[Xenophile]

There are GURPS fans?!?

Well... there WERE gurps fans.. I think it has pretty much faded away.. but what do I know.. I haven't seen/played any of that stuff in years. I was more of a Car Wars fan.. but had and knew gurps so the game sounded pretty cool when I first saw it promoed in PC Games or whatever magazine it was at the time.

And yes Interplay had a pretty big name at the time.. so it wasn't like a "no-name" company was releasing the game. Hell I even saw it in Atlanta at E3 (I think that was Fallout 1)

 

[UncannyGarlic]

There still are GURPS fans, it's just that it's not the most appealing system (especially to the non-hard core) since it can take six hours or more to create your first character with it and even once you get used to it it usually takes at least an hour, if not two. It's a cool system, it's just that character creation is about as user friendly as programing in binary (though I do know a couple guys who can read streaming binary and at least one of them can code it [yay for programmers from the 70s?]).

That all said, it was sarcasm...

 

[waldo]

Quick answers -- no groin shots because it took long enough for us to get the other body parts balanced. And we were afraid the groin shots would instantly change the tone to "goofy" -- so they didn't make the cut.

No, you can't get disarmed. We played with it, and in practice, we all found it annoying. We realized the player had enough to manage with just staying alive -- that added an extra dimension of difficulty and didn't add to the fun.

Right, so groin shots make the tone 'goofy' but firing teddy bears out of a homemade cannon isn't 'goofy'. Eh?

Sad that they removed being disarmed, I don't understand why. Oh yeah, becuase it's not 'fun' is it?
You could get disarmed in Oblivion anyway and that worked alright.

 

[Section8]

At the end of the day, the Bethesda way hasn't got much to do with actually gaming, and VATS is just the lastest iteration. Oblivion, Morrowind and even Daggerfall are more or less devoid of core gameplay. What they have instead are frictionless activities that allow the player to act in a way befitting the "role" the player has defined for themselves. They let you swing a sword, cast fireballs and so forth just so you can act like a warrior or a mage, but don't let that fool you into believing there's any real game component to this, because there's basically no challenge.

VATS only exists for a couple of reasons, firstly to try and tap into Fallout nostalgia by presenting a superficially similar concept. Secondly it's just there to let a gunman act like a gunman, and let players rack up their kill count. It's just another way of dressing up your character and is little more than a :shoot gun or :swing fire hydrant: emote.

All Bethesda are interested in is enabling post apocalyptic fantasies, and making them as frictionless as possible. Actual gameplay causes friction by presenting challenges, ergo it's gone by the wayside. If Bethesda ever made a car racing game, there would be no time limit, no opponents, just 50,000 miles of roads that look the same and more customisation option than you can shake a stick at - none of which actually do anything beyond cosmetics.

 

[Mungrul]

The depressing thing is, on one of the forums I visit where I consider the users to be of a high degree of competence and intelligence (the majority work in the industry, including Lionhead devs, Realtime Worlds devs, etc.), every one of them is really keen to be playing Fallout 3, and very few of them have any problems with Oblivion.
They also couldn't care less that the game strays wildly from the gameplay and canon of the originals.

They just want a cool looking real time shooter in a post apocalyptic world with RPG elements; the majority even consider Oblivion's role-playing mechanics to be good. And to a man, they all love the look of VATS.

Even when I directed them to the appaling Trench Warfare video, they couldn't see the flaws of the game.

I think this speaks volumes as to why the industry is in the current state it's in.

 

[Kindo]

At the end of the day, the Bethesda way hasn't got much to do with actually gaming, and VATS is just the lastest iteration. Oblivion, Morrowind and even Daggerfall are more or less devoid of core gameplay. What they have instead are frictionless activities that allow the player to act in a way befitting the "role" the player has defined for themselves. They let you swing a sword, cast fireballs and so forth just so you can act like a warrior or a mage, but don't let that fool you into believing there's any real game component to this, because there's basically no challenge.

VATS only exists for a couple of reasons, firstly to try and tap into Fallout nostalgia by presenting a superficially similar concept. Secondly it's just there to let a gunman act like a gunman, and let players rack up their kill count. It's just another way of dressing up your character and is little more than a :shoot gun or :swing fire hydrant: emote.

All Bethesda are interested in is enabling post apocalyptic fantasies, and making them as frictionless as possible. Actual gameplay causes friction by presenting challenges, ergo it's gone by the wayside. If Bethesda ever made a car racing game, there would be no time limit, no opponents, just 50,000 miles of roads that look the same and more customisation option than you can shake a stick at - none of which actually do anything beyond cosmetics.

A depressingly insightful and thoroughly interesting post - worth giving some thought.

 

[Texas Renegade]

The depressing thing is, on one of the forums I visit where I consider the users to be of a high degree of competence and intelligence (the majority work in the industry, including Lionhead devs, Realtime Worlds devs, etc.), every one of them is really keen to be playing Fallout 3, and very few of them have any problems with Oblivion.
They also couldn't care less that the game strays wildly from the gameplay and canon of the originals.

They just want a cool looking real time shooter in a post apocalyptic world with RPG elements; the majority even consider Oblivion's role-playing mechanics to be good. And to a man, they all love the look of VATS.

Even when I directed them to the appaling Trench Warfare video, they couldn't see the flaws of the game.

I think this speaks volumes as to why the industry is in the current state it's in.

It is a difference in perspective. Many on here have stated there biggest problem with the game being that it is a sequel to Fallout. Many have said they would be much more interested in the game if it was a spinoff. Most other players don't take that perspective. They take the perspective of looking for a fun game. It doesn't matter one spec to them how this game may or may not agree with previous games.

While a huge fan of the original games, I long ago took the perspective of judging games individually, especially if developers changed.

Blame it on the movie industry, I found sequels to be much more enjoyable generally speaking if I didn't compare them to the originals written and directed by an entirely different set of people.

 

[Pope Viper]

For me, it's hard not to compare them to the originals, especially when BS is constantly spouting how the game is a direct sequel, retaining the feel and spirit of the first two.

Yea. Right.

 

[junkevil]

So Fallout 3 being too hard or two easy is really a non-issue.

what a tard. this is the type of grammatical error that even 3rd graders don't make.

their two dumb!

<intentional errors>

 

[Bernard Bumner]

Did you need to read the forums and find out how the combat worked down to the last modifier to eventually play and enjoy the first Fallout?

It was actually fairly transparent to anyone with a knowledge of PnP roleplaying. The stats and modifiers intuitively translated into combat ability.

Anyway, the system was what it was, and it worked. In this case, Bethesda has retained SPECIAL, but changed the combat system. It isn't clear how they've integrated the stats into VATS. I'm genuinely interested, because VATS is something of a black box to me.

No? I didn't think so. So why would you need to know these details for Fallout 3? Or even Van Buren?

Why would you need to know the details? In order to properly roleplay the game.

How else do I know what stats to develop, other than by being able to see how they influence gameplay? If you are happy with simply knowing that buffing a particular skill-set will cause more damage then fine, but I would rather be able to more finely micro-manage my abilities. I thought that was the point of stats development?

And why would someone want to tell you something may be different only to incite ire?...

Honestly, this seems like a thinly veiled, tired jibe.

I want to know because I want to know, and there should be no reason not to be able to tell me. They decided to stick with a visible stats-based roleplaying system, so they should tell me what those stats actually do. If they cannot tell me exactly how SPECIAL influences VATS combat, then it is because they've broken the system.

That may not be the case, but I want to know if it is.

So, there are two possibilities; firstly, that they've retained and integrated SPECIAL in a useful and meaningful way, but are underselling the stats-based roleplaying, or secondly, that they've nerfed SPECIAL in VATS, but haven't said so.

 

[jero cvmi]

Did you need to read the forums and find out how the combat worked down to the last modifier to eventually play and enjoy the first Fallout?

No? I didn't think so. So why would you need to know these details for Fallout 3? Or even Van Buren?

Um... dont you need to know the rules of any game in order to play it?
in the original fallouts, it was pretty straitforward: skills, type of weapon, and distance, affect chance to hit. Even if you hadnt read the manual, you did it 2 or 3 times and you got it.
then you designed your character with the rules in mind.
now we dont really know how it works, except that its supposed to be "fun".

On the other hand, some people might find chess more fun if they just throw their pawns at the opponent, instead of following the rules....