Fallout 3 at E3 - RPGFan and GamersInfo

T

Tannhauser

Venerable Relic of the Wastes
Orderite
Two more gaming websites have joined in with their own impressions of the Fallout 3 demo Bethesda was showing at this years E3, RPGFan and GamersInfo. While the RPGFan article doesn't cover new ground, the GameInfo article does have some interesting information. Some enthusiasm from the RPGFan article:<blockquote>Fallout is a series that remains dear to many, many PC RPG fans worldwide. Despite the fact that the last two titles, Fallout Tactics and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel were not quite as well received, Fallout and Fallout 2 remain perennial favorites. Many were wary when Bethesda Softworks took the reins on the newest Fallout title. After all, how could some guys who had worked mainly on a fantasy-oriented series capture not only Fallout’s wonderful gameplay, but its post-apocalyptic flair? With Bethesda’s early demo at E3 2007, one thing is clear: while it is far from a carbon copy of the first two titles, the franchise is in safe hands. Todd Howard, one of the brains behind Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series and executive producer of Fallout 3, took us through an hour of their Fall 2008 release, and we couldn’t have been more impressed.</blockquote>And from the GamersInfo article:<blockquote>So, we walked around. For the demo, we tried to lie to our father, but with only a 29 percent chance of succeeding, it was a failure, and he ordered us to go take the G.O.A.T. As we walked to the classroom, people would say hello or go about their business - we got to see some Vault greasers (stereotypical 1950s gang members) harassing a young woman, and we could’ve gotten involved with that if we wanted, interacting with the Radiant artificial intelligence. Instead, acting like we were 19 - when you leave the Vault - we headed out of the Vault.
[. . .]
Why use VATS if you’re good at shooting?

Well, for one, Bethesda doesn’t want this to be a shooter - they want it to be a role-playing game. They’re still ironing out the combat system, but your chances of doing something good - a critical hit, a hit to a body part - will be better using VATS. Also, even in “twitch” mode, your skill still affects your accuracy and damage with a weapon.

Plus, when using VATS, you get cinematic! Instead of being completely focused in the first person’s must shoot it out with mutant, you get a brief dramatic movie of your actions as you fight it out! </blockquote>Pre-choice feedback on chance of success for dialogue options?

Links:
E3: Fallout 3 Demo at RPGFan.
Fallout 3 at GamersInfo

Spotted on the Bethesda Blog.
 
If I see any more of this sycophantic drivel I'm going to scream.
I should really stop looking. I keep telling myself to forget about it all. But I keep coming back, like watching a train wreck.
 
The GamersInfo preview is full of new info, and a few embarrassing mistakes too, but it's worthy of a detailed read.
 
...one thing is clear: while it is far from a carbon copy of the first two titles, the franchise is in safe hands.
Click to expand...
...one thing is clear: while it looks like we have our objective rational opinion, the Todd's ass is full of us.

Or something like that. I'm tired of these controversies.
 
The franchise is in safe hands?

You realise what this means, right?

WE'VE MADE CONTACT WITH A PARALLEL UNIVERSE!
 
Briosafreak said:
The GamersInfo preview is full of new info, and a few embarrassing mistakes too, but it's worthy of a detailed read.
Click to expand...

Very true, they're the first ones to deliver the question I've been waiting to be answered:

Why use VATS if you’re good at shooting?

Well, for one, Bethesda doesn’t want this to be a shooter - they want it to be a role-playing game. They’re still ironing out the combat system, but your chances of doing something good - a critical hit, a hit to a body part - will be better using VATS. Also, even in “twitch” mode, your skill still affects your accuracy and damage with a weapon.
Click to expand...
 
So, you wander the landscape. At a Red Rocket - a refueling station for those nuclear-powered cars - a few shots set an old car (a Chryslus Highwayman, if I remember the name correctly - each car will be identified to you when you look at it) on fire and blew it up in a mushroom cloud. Developers showed us how the system used to show all the destruction also allows the change in the scenery if you, for instance, shoot the scenery.
Click to expand...

WHAT?????

Now I've known about the stupid exploding nucular cars for a while. People have argued that maybe some cars in Fallout had nuclear reactors instead of fusion cells.
But the bloody Highwayman ran on cells. Cells! And they don't explode!! (Not that reactors do, mind you).
You messed with my Highwayman, Todd! I *hate* you!

At least they seemed to confirm gender choice, but that's like a speck of sugar in a jar full of bitter pills.
 
Vault 69er said:
But the bloody Highwayman ran on cells. Cells! And they don't explode!! (Not that reactors do, mind you).
Click to expand...
Will you stop arguing with bethesda? They know better!
 
Briosafreak said:
The GamersInfo preview is full of new info, and a few embarrassing mistakes too, but it's worthy of a detailed read.
Click to expand...
Your right, I tend to skim past all the superlatives after a while. The dialogue bit is interesting, changed the newspost accordingly.
 
Ironically enough, the GamersInfo article is probably one of the better articles about getting an actual look at the game. Some really awful faults there though.
Gotta love that Bethesda "recreated Vault 101" and that the older games had VATS. Oh well, guess I must've missed those.

From RPGfan:

Character creation can be done either via character sheeting – the easiest way to twink for veteran RPG fans – or by following quests in the first hour of the Vault, as the main character advances from birth to age nineteen.
Click to expand...

If this is true (cause god knows I can't trust these damn previews), then I wonder if that will make the whole Vault tutorial area entirerely skippable. Good choice if that's the case.

Aside from the really obvious awful things, I still wonder how the game will play out when they put such a huge and crude thing as the Megaton quest so early in the game. From the previews it just looks like you get there and it's basically either you blow the town up, or don't from the very get-go. Would be nice if there was some kind of introduction to the town at least to sort of ease the character into the quest. From the way it's described in the previews, it seems very heavyhanded.

And again, I wonder why they chose to make the Speech success percentage visible.

And of course, the water will be very welldone this time around when compared to Oblivion! Just what I wanted out of this game, now I bet I can really immerse myself into drinking brown toiletwater. Exactly what I want out of my RPGs.
 
I have a distinct feeling that some journalists played jeezball all day, then quickly copy and pasted a few terms and phrases to make an article about Fallout 3.
 
Black said:
Vault 69er said:
But the bloody Highwayman ran on cells. Cells! And they don't explode!! (Not that reactors do, mind you).
Click to expand...
Will you stop arguing with bethesda? They know better!
Click to expand...
Argumentum ad verecundiam. Ban this guy.
 
Brother None said:
Morbus said:
Argumentum ad verecundiam. Ban this guy.
Click to expand...

>_>

Toeing the line of split-vat, this thread is. Get back to a real discussion, this thread should.
Click to expand...
Heyhey, I was just being ironic, don't worry... Jeez -_-

Anyway, back to the real discussion it gets.

Basically, hacking entails getting the right password. You’ll look at a scrambled file with a number of words in it. Each time you try a word, it’ll tell you how many letters were right in the word. STREP might go to TRACK which might go to AWAIT, for instance. Get it right, and the ‘bot is yours - get it wrong, and you’ll get locked out.
Click to expand...
To those who thought bethesda STILL could get minigames right this time, read this again... This IS stupid.

Anyway, last time I went to the bathroom I thought of a better sistem than this, that would actually be FUN (a lot, really), immersive (to use the over-used cliche word) and at the same time (really) completely independent of the player's skill. I'll write about it in the correct forum.
 
Fallout 3 begins in Vault 101, one of the iconic vaults of the series,
Click to expand...

Man, the things I missed while playing the first two games.

After all, the Overseer says that when one is born in the Vault, they’ll die in the Vault.
Click to expand...

Because that's the type of motto you adapt to hearten and pacify people who hope to one day step out into the world again.

Enemies are incredibly <s>intelligent</s> scripted in Fallout 3.
Click to expand...

Fixed.

Before leaving the Vault, we ran into a handyman-type robot who complimented the look of the overalls we wore - then insulted us after we left. It was quite funny.
Click to expand...

Hm. I thought in Fallout, true AI was very cutting edge and housed in giant computers or in incredibly rare Cybernetic Brains.

With your trusty .22 rifle in hand, you can take potshots at the spiders, with a chance of hitting a body part (such as a leg, to slow it down, or an antenna to try to make it go berserk and attack his friends).
Click to expand...

Spiders don't have antennae. Ants do. It's questionable that an antenna-less ant would go into an anti-ant rage because of it.

In this case, the robot came out, didn’t know there’d been a war and so asked the super mutants for their tickets; when they didn’t show any, the robot killed them.
Click to expand...

Because that's what robots do when there's been no war.

… and hit the ground behind him, going up in a huge mushroom cloud.
Click to expand...

Never mind that the formation of mushroom clouds doesn't have anything to do with nukularity in the first place.

Those are the kind of situations you’re put into in Fallout 3. It’s a character-driven game with lots of hard choices of what to do - do you go “goodie goodie” or evil?
Click to expand...

Yup, that's the kind of tough moral decisions I'm faced with all the time. Not blowing up an entire community is a challenge not entirely outside the capabilities of Goodie McGoodgood and the clan McGood.
 
Half of the time i wonder why some developers shy away from using extreemely at hand documentation like wikipedia when going all fantasy science ... is it some form of arrogance or just a shortcut ? so wikipedia isnt the greatest but still how long does it take to search for stuff like ... nuke grenades :P ants ... clean water .. etc. ?
 
It's not that they don't know how to find the information, it's that they know that console kiddies will never know the difference and they can tell/give/show them whatever they want and it will be taken as gospel.

Same reason for the gigantic hype machine that they've set in motion.

Content means nothing to these jackasses, they only care about greenbacks and squeezing them out of their investment in the Fallout franchise.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top