Fallout 3 at E3 - The Escapist

[Vault 69er]

One only has to wonder why the utterly unplayable FO1 and FO2 still sell like hot cookies...

Thx to Bethesda's Fallout 3 and hype thats creating around Fallout franchise...

The Nobel No-Prize for Ignorant Statement of the Year goes to you!

 

[Kukident]

wow

awful in each possible sense

 

[Bunkermensch]

The game journalists seem to try to get on the same level as Bethesda is.

The dark decade of gaming is not over yet, it has just begun!
What will come after XBOX3sixty, Fallout3 and Wii?
If god will show mercy, then he will give us salvation by starting the Apocalypse then.

 

[SuAside]

wolfsrain, they're not trying to brainwash old fallout fans really, they're simply creating new ones and discrediting us along the way.

 

[A.S.S.R.]

It's been a decade since the original Fallout was released, and so much has changed about gaming, and games, that a new Fallout made like the originals would be largely unplayable, and deeply disappointing.

Which explains why I still replay Fo1/2 in various ways every couple of years. And somehow can't stay interested in Beth's latest games for more than two hours.

Todd Howard, played through about 45 minutes of the game, revealing a number of weapons, demonstrating the various control schemes and making a lot of things go BOOM.

I just love how this part reads like any ol' FPS preview.

you can enter the VATS system to target individual body parts of your opponent, and allocate action points, then watch as your character cinematically executes the attacks, often triggering explosions of gore.

This will be very amusing. The first three or four times, anyways.

NPCs do feel more like Bethesda NPCs than Black Isle NPCs

Stock characters = storytelling and immershun!

In Fallout, one always felt as if the world was what it was, and you would live or die without making much of a difference.

Wait...what?


- A.S.S.R.

 

[Kukident]

The game journalists seem to try to get on the same level as Bethesda is.

The dark decade of gaming is not over yet, it has just begun!
What will come after XBOX3sixty, Fallout3 and Wii?
If god will show mercy, then he will give us salvation by starting the Apocalypse then.

 

[Tannhauser]

The infamous Russ Pitts has taken to the comments:

I also have to add (and I can't believe I forgot to put this in the article) that having seen the Van Burn tech demo over at NMA, and having now seen Bethesda's Fallout 3, I have no doubt whatsoever that Bethesda's will (or would have been) the finer game.

 

[Per]

I also have to add (and I can't believe I forgot to put this in the article) that having seen the Van Burn tech demo over at NMA, and having now seen Bethesda's Fallout 3, I have no doubt whatsoever that Bethesda's will (or would have been) the finer game.

Way to judge games purely by the sh1n3ye, Mr Pitts.

Oh, sorry. Next-gen.

 

[CStalin]

It's been a decade since the original Fallout was released, and so much has changed about gaming, and games, that a new Fallout made like the originals would be largely unplayable, and deeply disappointing. And before you start saying "Van Buren" remember that that game, too, was made almost ten years ago. It would not be the same game today.

All the excuses that it would be unplayable or that they would have made it in First Person if they had the tech make absolutly no sense. They just pull these things out of their ass. No one on the original team ever said that they wanted to ever make it First person. Well at least Jagged Alliance 3 isnt a FPS now because they have the tech to do it.

 

[Tora]

The infamous Russ Pitts has taken to the comments:

I also have to add (and I can't believe I forgot to put this in the article) that having seen the Van Burn tech demo over at NMA, and having now seen Bethesda's Fallout 3, I have no doubt whatsoever that Bethesda's will (or would have been) the finer game.

Because a pre-alpha internal tech demo is just so comparable to a tailored-for-the-press linear-yet-'branching' OMG-NUKE-GO-BOOM demo. Oh wait, he was prob just comparing the 'next-gen-sparkliness', my bad.

 

[Vault 69er]

I also have to add (and I can't believe I forgot to put this in the article) that having seen the Van Burn tech demo over at NMA, and having now seen Bethesda's Fallout 3, I have no doubt whatsoever that Bethesda's will (or would have been) the finer game.

So the dumbtard has resorted to the old "let's compare an internal tech demo to an E3 demo" argument. Hilarious!
Stop trying, Mr. Pitts. You've already lost all your credibility. No need to keep at it.

 

[Kan-Kerai]

I also have to add (and I can't believe I forgot to put this in the article) that having seen the Van Burn tech demo over at NMA, and having now seen Bethesda's Fallout 3, I have no doubt whatsoever that Bethesda's will (or would have been) the finer game.

Way to judge by a tech demo, Russ.

Van Buren was over 60% complete. THE TECH DEMO WAS NOT.

Exercise reading comprehension here: TECH DEMO. All it was meant to show was an absolute skeletal framework of the engine essentials, and they used a very early version of the TUTORIAL as a vehicle to do this.

It was put together when the game was only a short way into development. Hence why turn-based combat (Jefferson [BG3] Engine was RT by default), the HP system, different skeletons for female characters, etc. etc. etc. hadn't been implemented, capice? Oh, and that's why there happened to be quite a bit of placeholder art, and why ALL of the music was placeholder.

BETHESDA is showing you gameplay from their Fallout 3, in a finalized engine with nearly finalized graphics, sound, and content.

This is assuming they haven't rigged up Megaton in the same way as the Fargoth quest from Morrowind, or the E3 showings of Oblivion (of which some of the special, never used in the shipped game but claimed as in-game features materials can still be found in the Construction Set)...

Most of the dialogue for Fallout 3 has already been recorded: do not expect changes in the quests or plotline, as that would cause cost overrun due to having to rerecord voice acting. Because of such constraints, the vast majority of the game is set in stone- anything that changes will be extremely minor.

What is revealed is final.

As a side note, this means criticism/feedback has little to no effect. This is why Bethesda, time and time again, stonewalls against anyone critical. What you have been seeing is what you're going to be getting, folks- omitting features that are flat-out lied about, such as Radiant AI (which was, in reality, a cumbersome mass of scripting with none of the emergent capability they attested).

Moving on...

Comparisons will be made, but they are not fair. If I could have shown you what Bethesda had two years ago, you'd have laughed your fucking ass off. Oh wait, you wouldn't have, because it's Bethesda. A different point thus stands:

On a prospective Fallout 3 Alpha Tech Demo: WELL CLEARLY IT'S A WORK IN PROGRESS GUYS IT'S NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE FINAL GAME AT ALL, AFTER ALL IT'S JUST A TECH DEMO

On Van Buren Alpha Tech Demo: CERTAINLY THIS MUST BE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE FINAL GAME THUS I SHALL COMPARE IT TO A GAME THAT IS NEARLY COMPLETE

Here's a bag of seeds, Mr. Pitts.

Next Arbor Day, plant yourself a Clue Tree for all the world to share.

-------------------------------

Here's an opinion piece of my own for you, since that's all your statement amounts to, Russ- opinion (and an uninformed one, at that):

If you believe Beth3 is shaping up as a better Fallout game than Van Buren was, you're SPECIAL. Fallout 3 is a caricature, a cartoon of the previous games at best.

Van Buren actually continued the story, and it actually looked like, sounded like, and played a great deal like the previous games.

Yet it was clearly its own game, and wasn't simply aping the most shallow, surface elements of the original entry in the series while ignoring EVERYTHING ELSE.

After all, Fallout is about blood and guts and swearing juxtaposed with cartoon characters. The Fatman is an "old friend". VATS was the combat system in the previous Fallout games.

Fallout is about being railroaded into not doing anything your father would disapprove of (after all, who wouldn't want Liam Neeson as a dad). Fallout is about Nuclear explosions happening after every stray bullet. Fallout is about launching Barbie Doll heads and Bottle Caps at opponents. Don't forget HK-47-esque sarcastic, back-biting Mr. Handys and Ticket Bots with Lasers! The list goes on.

If it's got PipBoy (golly-gee, these pants sure are tight), surely it's Fallout. Ignoring the whole Vault Boy thing.

So logic dictates, I could tattoo that stupid picture of Lil' Pip riding the GOAT (Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test) on my ass so...

"I can be Fallout Too!"

Not to be confused with 4too, ofc.

I'm ultra-limited edition. Cloning is against GOD (Generally Omnipotent Deity), so supplies are limited. Look out for expansions as I age!

 

[Briosafreak]

The infamous Russ Pitts has taken to the comments:

I also have to add (and I can't believe I forgot to put this in the article) that having seen the Van Burn tech demo over at NMA, and having now seen Bethesda's Fallout 3, I have no doubt whatsoever that Bethesda's will (or would have been) the finer game.

Because a pre-alpha internal tech demo is just so comparable to a tailored-for-the-press linear-yet-'branching' OMG-NUKE-GO-BOOM demo. Oh wait, he was prob just comparing the 'next-gen-sparkliness', my bad.

Yeah, really "professional"

 

[Brother None]

We are the professionals!

Please do complain in the thread on the Escapist. Keep all ad hominems, flames and personal attacks out of there, but I encourage people to voice their opinion there. I'm really disappointed at the Escapist lowering itself to presenting a PR text package as a preview. What a joke.

 

[Joe Kremlin]

Now that I think about it, an 1872 Reconstruction themed future would be pretty cool. Nuclear horse carriages, nuclear howitzers... umm, nuclear Abe Lincoln...

At least the game's setting would be right there.

 

[wolfsrain]

Yes, Brother None. Didn't expect The Escapist to sink that low. I feel sad about that.
And I also think that if the fanbase would have more of the documentation from the Van Buren project they just might make a more decent Fallout than Bethesda will ever do.
I'm still puzzled why they didn't passed the project to Obsidian. Why they completely ignored the people who worked on Van Buren...But people from Bethesda kew too well the original game. The nukes were falling over the world 5 years after the american civil war, nay? Most likely, the Beth's F3 universe is an alternate universe where the history was completely different from the original Fallout storyline...

 

[Ausir]

The fanbase does have pretty much all of the Van Buren documentation it needs to remake it.

 

[wolfsrain]

Well, with killap working hard on completing F2 and quite a few other mods in work from various teams, I feel that F2 will be played quite a bit in the coming years too.
And hopefully will see Van Buren to life, also.

 

[Nim82]

Making a game takes an awful lot of time, needs a lot of management and telented people able to commit. It's hard enough to do simple mods these days. A stat I saw a while back estimated that only about 10% of mods ever get to a releasable state. For full fan made games that figure would be even smaller.

There are some FO remake projects in the works, but don't hold your breath on them. AoD looks to be our best hope at this stage for a game with traditional FO gameplay. FIFE could open some doors eventually as well.

 

[Tannhauser]

Pitts has responded:

That said, you're spot-on that Van Buren was not a decades old project, but it was still largely based on decades old tech. Hence, my making of that point. I do not see the need to change it. Sorry.

As to the question of why I'd think Fallout 3 based on the decades old tech behind Fallouts 1&2 would be unplayable, perhaps "unplayable" is the wrong phrase to use. "Not worth playing" might be more accurate.