Fallout 3 .. 3d environment?

[ANezvigin]

Hi im new to the forums, but not to fallout Fallout is the only game i end up going back to again.. and again.. and again.. so anyway..

My question is if anyone has heard whether or not FO3 is going to be in a 3d environment?

I really hope it isn't..

Maybe it's just me though. Hell, if it was up to me, we'd have BOS graphics/animations, with maybe a few eye-candy-like touchups. I'd actually be fine with FO2 graphics as well..

What did it for me in Fallout was the gameplay, dialogue and story. Although I'd have to say the fancy graphics doesn't exactly mean that it would fit the game. I think the engine that runs FO2 and BOS captures everything PERFECTLY because it gives you nice visuals but doesn't force anything on you either. I dont know how to explain it though..

 

[Sander]

Nothing whatsoever has yet been announced by Bethesda (although I did miss some of the news a couple of months back, I may have missed something). But methinks it's safe to assume that it'll be 3D, they already have an engine for Morrowind 2, so they'll most probably be using those.

 

[Briosafreak]

http://www.nma-fallout.com/content.php?page=fo3-faq#engine

 

[ANezvigin]

thx for answers

I really hope they dont screw it up by creating a completely different style of fallout than it is.

Other dev studios have a habit of taking a great name and some good concepts from that name and creating a completely different game with only a few of those concepts implemented.

It's sort of like invalidating the idea of "ripping off" since their excuse is they are making a sequel. That way they can use what they like from Fallout, but essentially make a completely different game.

It's also good for them since they will get sales from all of the Fallout fans (even if they are pissed off). Those that never heard of fallout won't be able to tell the difference anyway. Kind of like doubling your selling power...

 

[Santa_Claws]

I dont think 3D is such a bad idea. Not if it comes from Bethesda anyway. If they can't pull this off, I don't know who will. The few flaws of Morrowind were: lack of true grass, screwed up dialogue(keywords suck big time), and NPCs, wich could be considered checkpoints as far as I'm concerned. But they won't make this mistakes again. They already have the Radiant A.I. and I trust the engine used for Oblivion to be flexible enough to provide an isometric view. Although I understand the fear for 3D, I think it is time for this leap.

 

[Sander]

Not only is this largely off-topic, but it's gravedigging a month old thread as well.

Why?

As for your arguments, they hold little ground. A lot more was wrong with Morrowind for one, the world was absolutely not immersive, the quests boring and unimaginative, the character system flawed and unbalanced.

As for Radiant A.I., unless you know something I don't, I don't see how you can know that will actually make things better. Never believe a hype until you see it happen. 'It's much better than anything you've ever seen!' is really easy to say.

And besides that, unless they're going to make Fallout 3 Morrowind in a new setting, the Radiant A.I. won't do them much good. Fallout's setting, environment and systems are completely different from Morrowind's and would require a lot of tweaking (if not complete rewriting) to work.

 

[Roshambo]

I dont think 3D is such a bad idea. Not if it comes from Bethesda anyway. If they can't pull this off, I don't know who will. The few flaws of Morrowind were: lack of true grass, screwed up dialogue(keywords suck big time), and NPCs, wich could be considered checkpoints as far as I'm concerned. But they won't make this mistakes again.

Really? After Arena, Daggerfall, Battlespire, and then Morrowind?

This, about the same people who either had to dumb down the combat system, remove it due to time constraints, or left it out/removed it so that the port over to X-Brick doesn't require a keyboard, I haven't really heard a definite excuse either way.

Now they are also making it so that if your sword touches an enemy, it hits them.

So then why are they supposed to be so good at CRPGs when all they have managed to do is dumb down their action/adventure titles into something more banal with every incarnation? I haven't been able to get this leap of logic quite yet.

I am sure, however, that Oblivion, and likely Fallout 3 as well, will keep the tradition of going for more shiny graphics/'effects. Let us know when they have a playable role-playing game.

 

[MrSmileyFaceDude]

Hey, you leave Battlespire out of this!

Anyway, Fallout 3 will be very, very different from Oblivion (or any other TES game). It won't be "Morrowind with guns". It won't even be "Oblivion with guns".

 

[Dagon]

Hey, you leave Battlespire out of this!

Anyway, Fallout 3 will be very, very different from Oblivion (or any other TES game). It won't be "Morrowind with guns". It won't even be "Oblivion with guns".

That are great news
When we will see some screenshots Mr.SmileyFaceDude?

 

[Brother None]

Hey, you leave Battlespire out of this!

Anyway, Fallout 3 will be very, very different from Oblivion (or any other TES game). It won't be "Morrowind with guns". It won't even be "Oblivion with guns".

To be honest with you, I never thought the label "Morrowind with guns" was very fair, though it is kinda funny to say. It would be like calling Planescape:Torment Fallout with swords. Hell, the only game such a label applies to would be Arcanum, which rocked, even if it was a bit daunting.

As you've never done a CRPG like Fallout, it's pretty much an open book. It's kind of odd to consider this freaks so many people out when you consider that the BIS staff working at Van Buren had ALSO for the most part never or only peripherally worked on the Fallout games. But hell, they were called BIS, so everyone was fine with it...

Maybe BethSoft should become "Bethesda Intelligence Softworks", then we can call you BIS and everyone will be happy.

And thanks for the dropline

 

[the_move]

Yeah, in Doom3 there are also audio logs. Very good
for increasing the atmosphere!

 

[Roshambo]

Hey, you leave Battlespire out of this!

What about the uh...Red-headed step-child of the series?

Anyway, Fallout 3 will be very, very different from Oblivion (or any other TES game). It won't be "Morrowind with guns". It won't even be "Oblivion with guns".

I certainly hope not, and many of us are still a bit hesitant about Bethesda's affinity towards action-based titles and earlier discussions about uh..."improvements."

 

[Screaming_Dude_in_Vegas]

Not only is this largely off-topic, but it's gravedigging a month old thread as well.

Why?

As for your arguments, they hold little ground. A lot more was wrong with Morrowind for one, the world was absolutely not immersive, the quests boring and unimaginative, the character system flawed and unbalanced.

As for Radiant A.I., unless you know something I don't, I don't see how you can know that will actually make things better. Never believe a hype until you see it happen. 'It's much better than anything you've ever seen!' is really easy to say.

And besides that, unless they're going to make Fallout 3 Morrowind in a new setting, the Radiant A.I. won't do them much good. Fallout's setting, environment and systems are completely different from Morrowind's and would require a lot of tweaking (if not complete rewriting) to work.

Visualy the world was very immersive. The problem was the NPCs and the quests. See the predecessors to morrowind (daggerfall and arena) both had these huge worlds that were mostely randomly generated. Morrowind was much smaller, and everything was done by hand. There was not a single randomly genorated thing in that game (aside from respawing monsters and treasure). Now TES has a pretty hard-assed fanbase (I know, I'm one of them) and they obviousely were under pressure to pack a ton of content into that game. Basicaly they ended up with quanity over quality alot of the time. So too much time was spent on hand crafting the world, and not enough on quests/NPCs. In oblivion this will be fixed. See they randomly generated much of the world (like wilderness and such), and then went in and tweaked it, added clutter ect...

Now that may seam like a bad exuse, but trust me. I've modded morrowind, made wilderness regions and dungeons with their construction set, and set my standard at around the same level of detail as the orginal game. It takes a while to do an island that takes up less than half a cell on their map. Now take a look at their map, pan over the land, or whatever. You have a hand-crafted world about 18,000 times the size of your little island.

As for RAI, bethsada gave out alot of info on how it actually works. Basicaly it gives each NPC a set of goals, sets governing factors on how they achive these goals, a system of ways new goals can be added and removed, other than scripting (though scripting is still a valid way to change the AI). We'll see when it's out. I doubt it will be "SUPER UBER-FANTASTIC WOW!" but it should get NPCs to move around town, caravans to actually move, and cut down on the amount of scripting needed (morrowing was very laggy because it was so script heavy).

And how the hell do you know that they will just throw fallout in the morrowind/oblivion engine?...OK, they probably will use the same base engine, gamebyro, but that is the basic 3d engine. They will then tweak that to meat their needs. There is no reason for them to bother tweaking the oblivion engine, because it's a whole diferent gameplay expeirience, and stuff like havock and speed tree arent needed in FO. Considering the amount of engine tweaking they do, I don't think it's a far stretch for them to turn the gamebyro engine into somthing fit for FO.

Hey, you leave Battlespire out of this!

What about the uh...Red-headed step-child of the series?

Anyway, Fallout 3 will be very, very different from Oblivion (or any other TES game). It won't be "Morrowind with guns". It won't even be "Oblivion with guns".

I certainly hope not, and many of us are still a bit hesitant about Bethesda's affinity towards action-based titles and earlier discussions about uh..."improvements."

TES was a first person action-RPG from the begining. It's not like they took a turn based game and suddenly released a real time action title. The devs AREN'T idiots. So what if their RPG is real time and if first person? The thing is (IMHO, after FO) still the second best single player RPG out there, and it's the closest thing to fallout interms of what makes it awsome. They both have the same style of "roam around, do the quests you want, skip the ones you don't, make a unique character". I mean it's much better than getting a company that focuses in liniar, "main quest is everything, sidequest are extras" style RPGs.

 

[Signeon]

If Fallout 3 DOES have a 3d environment, I want F3 to have an isometric camera angle while having a 3d environment. Objects in the world could be destructible and the graphics could be great, while still preserving the classic camera angle.

 

[Sander]

Visualy the world was very immersive. The problem was the NPCs and the quests. See the predecessors to morrowind (daggerfall and arena) both had these huge worlds that were mostely randomly generated. Morrowind was much smaller, and everything was done by hand. There was not a single randomly genorated thing in that game (aside from respawing monsters and treasure). Now TES has a pretty hard-assed fanbase (I know, I'm one of them) and they obviousely were under pressure to pack a ton of content into that game. Basicaly they ended up with quanity over quality alot of the time. So too much time was spent on hand crafting the world, and not enough on quests/NPCs. In oblivion this will be fixed. See they randomly generated much of the world (like wilderness and such), and then went in and tweaked it, added clutter ect...

Now that may seam like a bad exuse, but trust me. I've modded morrowind, made wilderness regions and dungeons with their construction set, and set my standard at around the same level of detail as the orginal game. It takes a while to do an island that takes up less than half a cell on their map. Now take a look at their map, pan over the land, or whatever. You have a hand-crafted world about 18,000 times the size of your little island.

Personally, I didn't consider the visuals to be stimulating at all. But that may just be me.

Yes, they ended up with quantity over quality. The fact that thir engine and way of creating a world requires so much work is none of the gamer's concerns. It's purely their problem, and they created that problem by working the way they did. They didn't actually have a ton of content, they had very little content and a lot of generic quests, NPCs and areas. So the game was largely hand-crafted, it was boring.

As for RAI, bethsada gave out alot of info on how it actually works. Basicaly it gives each NPC a set of goals, sets governing factors on how they achive these goals, a system of ways new goals can be added and removed, other than scripting (though scripting is still a valid way to change the AI). We'll see when it's out. I doubt it will be "SUPER UBER-FANTASTIC WOW!" but it should get NPCs to move around town, caravans to actually move, and cut down on the amount of scripting needed (morrowing was very laggy because it was so script heavy).

Eh? What? This sounds like the basis of any AI. You give a character a bunch of goals and ways to achieve those goals, that's the basis of programming any AI. If you script everything for NPCs, that isn't exactly AI any more.
Also, this won't make the game run any quicker than with scripting, the fact that the PC now computes automatically what it needs to do instead of it having been scripted by scripters doesn't actually reduce the amount of computations and hence doesn't make anything any quicker.

And how the hell do you know that they will just throw fallout in the morrowind/oblivion engine?...OK, they probably will use the same base engine, gamebyro, but that is the basic 3d engine. They will then tweak that to meat their needs. There is no reason for them to bother tweaking the oblivion engine, because it's a whole diferent gameplay expeirience, and stuff like havock and speed tree arent needed in FO. Considering the amount of engine tweaking they do, I don't think it's a far stretch for them to turn the gamebyro engine into somthing fit for FO.

I never said I knew they'd use the same engine, all I did was claim that they'd need to tweak the Radiant AI to work with Fallout, since they originally are going to use it with Morrowind. Santa_Claws claimed that they already had the Radiant AI so that they didn't need to worry about that.

TES was a first person action-RPG from the begining. It's not like they took a turn based game and suddenly released a real time action title. The devs AREN'T idiots. So what if their RPG is real time and if first person? The thing is (IMHO, after FO) still the second best single player RPG out there, and it's the closest thing to fallout interms of what makes it awsome. They both have the same style of "roam around, do the quests you want, skip the ones you don't, make a unique character". I mean it's much better than getting a company that focuses in liniar, "main quest is everything, sidequest are extras" style RPGs.

Morrowind did all of this very poorly, though. Where Fallout had an involving world, interesting and unique characters, Morrowind had a boring world and generic characters.
Basically, Morrowind gave you freedom, but the freedom was worthless since it was no fun and not immersive. I never got anything even remotely similar to a feeling of involvement.

 

[Santa_Claws]

Wow, wow, wait, I didn't say they would use Radiant A.I. for sure, but the chances are they will use something close to that. In one interview they said they are using some new technology they are developing now and it's not the engine used for Morrowind. So the game will be in 3D for sure. Personally I'm not afraid of this change, I just hope they will keep the combat and dialogue system in place. 2D/3D can't ruin Fallout3 as long as you have the option to lock the view on isometric and the camera not centering on the player all the time.

 

[Screaming_Dude_in_Vegas]

Visualy the world was very immersive. The problem was the NPCs and the quests. See the predecessors to morrowind (daggerfall and arena) both had these huge worlds that were mostely randomly generated. Morrowind was much smaller, and everything was done by hand. There was not a single randomly genorated thing in that game (aside from respawing monsters and treasure). Now TES has a pretty hard-assed fanbase (I know, I'm one of them) and they obviousely were under pressure to pack a ton of content into that game. Basicaly they ended up with quanity over quality alot of the time. So too much time was spent on hand crafting the world, and not enough on quests/NPCs. In oblivion this will be fixed. See they randomly generated much of the world (like wilderness and such), and then went in and tweaked it, added clutter ect...

Now that may seam like a bad exuse, but trust me. I've modded morrowind, made wilderness regions and dungeons with their construction set, and set my standard at around the same level of detail as the orginal game. It takes a while to do an island that takes up less than half a cell on their map. Now take a look at their map, pan over the land, or whatever. You have a hand-crafted world about 18,000 times the size of your little island.

Personally, I didn't consider the visuals to be stimulating at all. But that may just be me.

Yes, they ended up with quantity over quality. The fact that thir engine and way of creating a world requires so much work is none of the gamer's concerns. It's purely their problem, and they created that problem by working the way they did. They didn't actually have a ton of content, they had very little content and a lot of generic quests, NPCs and areas. So the game was largely hand-crafted, it was boring.

As for RAI, bethsada gave out alot of info on how it actually works. Basicaly it gives each NPC a set of goals, sets governing factors on how they achive these goals, a system of ways new goals can be added and removed, other than scripting (though scripting is still a valid way to change the AI). We'll see when it's out. I doubt it will be "SUPER UBER-FANTASTIC WOW!" but it should get NPCs to move around town, caravans to actually move, and cut down on the amount of scripting needed (morrowing was very laggy because it was so script heavy).

Eh? What? This sounds like the basis of any AI. You give a character a bunch of goals and ways to achieve those goals, that's the basis of programming any AI. If you script everything for NPCs, that isn't exactly AI any more.
Also, this won't make the game run any quicker than with scripting, the fact that the PC now computes automatically what it needs to do instead of it having been scripted by scripters doesn't actually reduce the amount of computations and hence doesn't make anything any quicker.

And how the hell do you know that they will just throw fallout in the morrowind/oblivion engine?...OK, they probably will use the same base engine, gamebyro, but that is the basic 3d engine. They will then tweak that to meat their needs. There is no reason for them to bother tweaking the oblivion engine, because it's a whole diferent gameplay expeirience, and stuff like havock and speed tree arent needed in FO. Considering the amount of engine tweaking they do, I don't think it's a far stretch for them to turn the gamebyro engine into somthing fit for FO.

I never said I knew they'd use the same engine, all I did was claim that they'd need to tweak the Radiant AI to work with Fallout, since they originally are going to use it with Morrowind. Santa_Claws claimed that they already had the Radiant AI so that they didn't need to worry about that.

TES was a first person action-RPG from the begining. It's not like they took a turn based game and suddenly released a real time action title. The devs AREN'T idiots. So what if their RPG is real time and if first person? The thing is (IMHO, after FO) still the second best single player RPG out there, and it's the closest thing to fallout interms of what makes it awsome. They both have the same style of "roam around, do the quests you want, skip the ones you don't, make a unique character". I mean it's much better than getting a company that focuses in liniar, "main quest is everything, sidequest are extras" style RPGs.

Morrowind did all of this very poorly, though. Where Fallout had an involving world, interesting and unique characters, Morrowind had a boring world and generic characters.
Basically, Morrowind gave you freedom, but the freedom was worthless since it was no fun and not immersive. I never got anything even remotely similar to a feeling of involvement.

Alot of people did like morrowind visualy. It had a very cool alien fantasy landscape, that actually made sence at the same time. Also the weather effects were just wonderful, and tooling around the costal areas was just great, especialy if you have a computer where you can turn the view distance up to the max.

I'm not saying that the problems with morrowind were exusable, I'm saying that they won't happen again. There WAS a good reason for that stuff, and one that was fixed unless everything the devs said was a lie. And I'm not talking about the hype, I'm talking about the statements that they used random generation, which realy can't be considered hype by any stretch of the imagination.

Well your description of AI dosn't seem like what I tend to see in the gaming world. The idea hear is that this is more long term. I'm sorry, but in most RPGs (fallout included), the NPCs just sit around, react, talk, might move around in scripted occurances, might fight, possibly move/dissapear at night, ect...

Trust me, anything is better than scripting. When somthing is built into the engine, it works much better than if it is added in later with scripts.

The RAI dosn't need to be tweaked, aside from afew changes to work in a turn based combat system. The way it's implemented might need to be tweaked however, with most people focusing on survival.

Morrowind had no real way of destingwishing "Filler" NPCs. That was the big problem. See in fallout, the dialouge options and such only come up for important NPCs, where in morrowind all NPCs used the same template. There were cool NPCs with real personality in there, they were just hard to find, because you had no way of knowing weather they were "filler" or not. Also their uniquness only kicked in under afew topics, because alot of the topics just brought up generic information, which was probably made for the idea of "ask anyone about any topic". This ment that unique NPCs didn't feal as unique. They're planning on only including topics in an NPC's menue that they actualy have unique dialouge this time around.

As for the involvement. Morrowind did work in some situations. Manny of the mods did this better than the original content. I mean anything looks sucky when compared to fallout. I mean the whole "It's not fallout so it sucks" concept is just bullshit. They are different games, and so they have different strengths and weaknesses. I mean would you rather some company that did the whole liniar RPG thing?

 

[Roshambo]

I certainly hope not, and many of us are still a bit hesitant about Bethesda's affinity towards action-based titles and earlier discussions about uh..."improvements."

TES was a first person action-RPG from the begining. It's not like they took a turn based game and suddenly released a real time action title.

First, I'd like to note that you're preaching to the pope here. (Is it legit to use pope jokes again?) I am fully well aware of the development around TES, and also surprisingly, around most of Bethesda's work.

The devs AREN'T idiots. So what if their RPG is real time and if first person?

They are a company I DO respect, and that is why I give them a bit of a ribbing about their work. It IS primarily action-based, and that is speaking as a whole, and this will be perhaps the first true P&P RPG style CRPG they will be releasing as a title. I have long stated this a long time ago, it is not the question as to how good they are as developers, but what their preferred development style is.

I have admired the work of BIS despite the flaws in Fallout 2, the crapfest of Asswind Dale and the forgettable sequel, and the not-so-forgettable expansion for the first. The reason was because they showed that they could do the effort if they were able to.

I even do admire what BioWare has done, despite many of the flaws. They now have an audience to do something truly stylish, and yet they shoot for groin level like a D&D Disney movie. Someday this might change.

I don't give people shit if I don't want them to do better. Otherwise, like Derek Smart and Romero, they are a waste of time and a running joke as the corpse of their career is kicked into the ground.

The thing is (IMHO, after FO) still the second best single player RPG out there, and it's the closest thing to fallout interms of what makes it awsome.

What they develop is also dangerously close as to what has screwed over the other aspects of Fallout's design used in other games. An action game, people still hate the idea of it since FOS. Real-time combat, Lionheart. The story/setting losing it's cohesion due to setting elements taking a back seat, Fallout Tactics and parts of Fallout 2.

They both have the same style of "roam around, do the quests you want, skip the ones you don't, make a unique character". I mean it's much better than getting a company that focuses in liniar, "main quest is everything, sidequest are extras" style RPGs.

That doesn't mean much if it's Fallout Meets Sacred.

 

[Screaming_Dude_in_Vegas]

The real time fear is pointless. Just because bethsoft has done real time in the past dosn't mean they can't do turn based. They are fans of FO, just like you and me.

 

[Sander]

Alot of people did like morrowind visualy. It had a very cool alien fantasy landscape, that actually made sence at the same time. Also the weather effects were just wonderful, and tooling around the costal areas was just great, especialy if you have a computer where you can turn the view distance up to the max.

Well, I really didn't like the visuals personally. But hey, maybe that's just a matter of taste.

I'm not saying that the problems with morrowind were exusable, I'm saying that they won't happen again. There WAS a good reason for that stuff, and one that was fixed unless everything the devs said was a lie. And I'm not talking about the hype, I'm talking about the statements that they used random generation, which realy can't be considered hype by any stretch of the imagination.

True, I doubt they won't happen again, though, but we shall see.

Well your description of AI dosn't seem like what I tend to see in the gaming world. The idea hear is that this is more long term. I'm sorry, but in most RPGs (fallout included), the NPCs just sit around, react, talk, might move around in scripted occurances, might fight, possibly move/dissapear at night, ect...

I was talking aobut the principle of ANY AI. Doom's AI had the goal of 'Kill the player' and the means being their weapons, and their abilities to locate the player. Your description of RAI is simply a descripition of any AI.

Trust me, anything is better than scripting. When somthing is built into the engine, it works much better than if it is added in later with scripts.

Bullshit. That depends solely on the quality of the scripting and the quality of the engine.

The RAI dosn't need to be tweaked, aside from afew changes to work in a turn based combat system. The way it's implemented might need to be tweaked however, with most people focusing on survival.

If you move anything in between different environments, count on it that either it needs to be tweaked, or the environment it lands in. That is, unless it is exceptionally well-made, there are usually several compatibility problems.

Morrowind had no real way of destingwishing "Filler" NPCs. That was the big problem. See in fallout, the dialouge options and such only come up for important NPCs, where in morrowind all NPCs used the same template. There were cool NPCs with real personality in there, they were just hard to find, because you had no way of knowing weather they were "filler" or not. Also their uniquness only kicked in under afew topics, because alot of the topics just brought up generic information, which was probably made for the idea of "ask anyone about any topic". This ment that unique NPCs didn't feal as unique. They're planning on only including topics in an NPC's menue that they actualy have unique dialouge this time around.

That'd be great. But that doesn't mean it'll be any good, if it was of the quality of Morrowind.
Also, maybe it's just me, but I never encountered an interesting NPC, and I have played it for several months.

As for the involvement. Morrowind did work in some situations. Manny of the mods did this better than the original content. I mean anything looks sucky when compared to fallout. I mean the whole "It's not fallout so it sucks" concept is just bullshit. They are different games, and so they have different strengths and weaknesses. I mean would you rather some company that did the whole liniar RPG thing?

I never claimed anything like 'It's not Fallout, so it sucks'. There are games out there that have great involvement, Planescape: Torment, for instance, or Half-Life. Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines as well. This has nothing to do with Fallout, but solely with how involving I find a game to be.
And yes, the games have different strengths and weaknesses, but I like Fallout a lot, so surprisingly, I like my games to have the same strengths as Fallout.
Also, I have no problems with Bethesda developing Fallout 3, I haven't seen much of what they're going to do with the game so I can't judge that at all. But I can judge what they've done in the past, so that's what I'm doing.