I just want to 'justify' my teddybear remark a bit.
I'm a big Fallout fan. Maybe not as crazy as some people here, but normally I play through the games about once a year. It's really one of my favorite games of all time as its setting and humor really appeal to me.
Initially I wasn't really so upset as some of the other Fallout fans when I heard Bethesda were going to make #3. I believed this could be a chance to finally have a third installment of our game and that it could genuinely be good. Most of the time I was annoyed reading NMA and its members bashing every single thing Bethesda did or said (mostly on speculative or unfounded basis), even before they started working on it.
I wasn't expecting a 'true' Fallout, but nevertheless a game that would stand for itself and would provide a good Fallouty experience. I quite liked Morrowind, mostly just to walk around the huge world with lots of different places and different looks. Oblivion was ok for the first few hours, but I got bored after a while. The world wasn't as diverse as its predecessor and it didn't seem as huge either. If they would learn from their mistakes and shift their ideas of an RPG (actual dialog, better stats, no levelling, ...) and make a good looking Fallout world, I presumed it could work. Some of the artwork was ok and the first trailer/teaser looked pretty neat.
However, from what I've seen in the screenshots and now in the demo movies, I'm left hugely disappointed. To me, it doesn't look like they captured the Fallout world correcty. When I first imagined a 3D Fallout world, I was thinking about huge deserts, Mad Max-like constructions (like the people from the oil pump in Mad Max 2), ..
I remember seeing a Fallout screenshot in a games magazine review (this one from Junktown:
http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/original/981085145-00.jpg), that really convinced me to buy the game at the time. People living in a mutated world, shot to bits by an atomic war in the past, where they try to survive and rebuild some 'civilized' towns using scrap parts, trying to stay safe from all the dangers that they face. I just cannot find any of that in the things Bethesda have shown so far.
In their defense, they have only shown little bits of the game. But usually you demonstrate the most amazing features of your game to create the biggest interest and hype possible. E.g. I remember seeing screenshots and movies of Half-Life 2 after waiting for a long time and was stunned by what I saw. The conclusions that I've drawn from what Bethesda has shown me are the following. Keep in mind that it's based on my own opinion and personal taste of course.
- The world just didn't seem Fallout-like. It didn't show me the struggle to survive, the dangers of the wasteland and radiation, the (re)building of settlements.
- Going to first-person is acceptable, I can understand Bethesda have to take the 'mass-market' into account when it comes to making games. It's expensive and you have to attract a big audience. But what I saw was nothing more than a crappy FPS. I don't know what the AI was doing, but I didn't come to think at one point that they were an actual threat to me. In Fallout, I was sometimes thinking: better not have any trouble with those people, and I consequently avoided them.
- There wasn't any RPG aspect. This is an RPG, so I expect to see some NPC interaction and quest solving next to the combat. The combat didn't look great so if they prefered to show only the combat, I'm afraid the rest is even worse. Or perhaps RPG aspects don't appeal to most gamers so they don't show it? But in that case they're better off making a FPS with only bits of RPG in it. Or is that what they're actually doing?
- The combat looked flawed. Perhaps they're still working on it, but it didn't look exciting. On top of that the people exploded ridiculously after getting hit. The deaths in Fallout were sometimes exagerated, but remained realistic enough and really cool looking. There weren't body parts flying around all the time. Worst of all, a guy can explode after getting hit by a teddybear fired from a rocketlauncher. Come on... When I saw that all hope just perished.
Normally I'm one of the last guys to flame, and I can get really annoyed by some others continuously flaming on the least bit of information. I generally wait and see what will come and judge on that. You can see by my post count that I hardly ever reply, while I read NMA regularly. But in this case I just couldn't help myself. He says a guy got ripped into pieces by a deathclaw. If you can get killed by exploding into several parts because of an incoming teddybear, the deathclaw might as well spit fire or cast a spell.
That's why I couldn't help myself joking about it. I hardly ever read all the forum posts, so I didn't know this was an on-going joke. I even doubted posting it, and apparently for good reason :p.
So there you have it. I doubt I made a joke about something insignificant to Fallout 3, as it shows something seriously wrong about the combat and/or the humor (if it was meant as a joke). I liked the idea in Fallout 2 that you could rip the kid's Nixon doll apart in front of his eyes (although I never could :p). I just don't like the idea in Fallout 3 that you can blow someone to bits with a teddybear
. There's a world of difference.
Anyway. Perhaps a big post by me, but since I only rarely write here it's perhaps not so bad that I provide a substantial post instead of a single joke.
but honestly there are a lot of things that worry me. I just try not to jump to conclusions.
