Fallout 3 Hands-Ons #2

Brother None

Brother None

This ghoul has seen it all
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Three more hands-on previews have surfaced from E3. We'll start with Xbox 360 Fanboy (thanks Briosafreak), who swing us right back to the good old Oblivion with Guns talk.<blockquote>Some things must be made clear. One, I played Bethesda's Fallout 3 today. Two, I have never played a Fallout title before, so I can't judge it based on the merits of the series. Joystiq will detail the differences between Fallout 3 and its predecessors in its hands on preview llater this week. With that out of the way, let me just throw this on the table: Fallout 3 is Oblivion with guns. It's a short analysis, but I stand by it. If one were to expand upon this analysis, one might say that Fallout 3 is a post-apocalyptic Oblivion with guns. Having said that, allow me elaborate that this is a compliment. Oblivion fans will understand this. Upon hearing my analysis, our own Xav de Matos noted, "I think I need a cigarette.... that sounds awesome."</blockquote>GameSpy decided to return a mere 2 days after publishing their first hands-on preview.<blockquote>We decided to dedicate every action point we had to try to score that elusive assault-rifle headshot. The results were worth the effort. The camera swung around to show our attack from over the enemy's shoulder. Our rifle round streaked through the air and -- hello, M Rating -- blasted apart our foe's skull in a hail of brains.

"Stay in school!" I shouted.</blockquote>And GameZone.<blockquote>You can save at any time and the NPCs are very interactive. One of the first you will see outside of the city of Megaton gives you the choice to walk on by or to pick his pocket. That is another facet of the game. What you do will result in how others within this single-player world react to you. Actions have consequences.</blockquote>Wait, the NPC gives you the choice to walk on by or pick his pocket?<blockquote>The control scheme was very intuitive, and the sound, played at a lower level through headphones captured the wasteland perfectly. The graphics could be a little bloody at times. As the created character (Bethesda had stations with pre-created characters on it) walked through the wasteland, he was beset by a wild dog. Taking the typical first-person shooter route, he backed up while emptying his clip on his 10mm gun into the dog. He literally blew the head off the animal. Anything destroyed or killed in the game does have the option of a loot drop, which can be placed into inventory and then sold later.</blockquote>Link: Fallout 3 hands-on preview at GameSpy.
Link: Fallout 3 hands-on preview at Xbox 360 Fanboy.
Link: Fallout 3 hands-on preview at GameZone.
 
Brother None said:
Wait, the NPC gives you the choice to walk on by or pick his pocket?
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Seriously.

That's like an intrinsic choice. It's not a choice you're given, it's a choice you simply have, in any decent RPG: talk to NPC, kill NPC, pick his pockets. That's not a choice, that's a basic fundamental.

Why the hell aren't we getting proper choice and consequence examples? Why is every previewer spending his time shooting at things? I wantz proper previewz.
 
Brother None said:
He literally blew the head off the animal. Anything destroyed or killed in the game does have the option of a loot drop, which can be placed into inventory and then sold later.
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What, exactly, is it that you loot from a decimated dog? Probably just another previewer error.. Hopefully.
 
The game does have some actual C&C (not sure how much, since I've only seen a portion of the dialogues). I'd give you some examples if I were allowed to.
 
Of course it does. I've seen some of the dialogue myself and it had sensible options at some points, not just yes-yesformoney-no-I'll kill you.

Driving Mr Burke out of town, getting more money from him, whatevz. Bare minimum, but it is some kind of C&C.

I'm just waiting for some real cRPG veteran (Desslock, Mr Green?) to sit down with the game and emerge with a big smile going "this was deep, man, I took this path and half an hour later it came back and bit me in the ass". 's what I'd like to see.

This way it all smells of BioWare. A thin veneer of fake consequences to non-existence choices.

For example: dialogue. It seems they don't save/reload for the hands-on demos, right? So they only get to pick one path through dialogue.

Remember Jade Empire? 3 options for every line, yet at every time at least 2 of those options would lead to exactly the same response. And often the third would join in so that the dialogue would just happen regardless of player input.

Fake dialogue choices. It's so easy to fool someone with that. Horrible invention, really.

Pete actually mentioned some at some point: two or three ways to insult your bully and start a fight. So what? Those are fake dialogue choices, I don't need 3 different lines for exactly the same result.
 
I vote for change "hands-ons" to "hard-ons"- it will better reflect the actual feel of our journalists.
 
Gamezone said:
You can save at any time and the NPCs are very interactive. One of the first you will see outside of the city of Megaton gives you the choice to walk on by or to pick his pocket. That is another facet of the game. What you do will result in how others within this single-player world react to you. Actions have consequences.
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That gave me the most bizarre mental image of an NPC telling, no, demanding you to pick his pocket, prompting a difficult choice between going for the loot and doing the right thing. Very strange wording if that isn't the case. Using that as an example of choice/consequence and the world reacting to the player is odd, especially since there is no mention of any consequences.

Other than that, pretty uninteresting overall.
 
One of the previewers said he got the sheriff of megaton to kill him through bad dialogue choices and then reloaded. But I don't think you're gonna get the "bite you in the ass" consequences from an hour with the game... though another previewer did say his actions in megaton had caused Burke to "want him dead". I can see that leading to some things.

I played through mass effect twice, every single dialogue option almost always got the same exact response as the other... that game wasn't very good on the choice thing.


Anyone else notice how the gamespy previewer said you can target specific body parts with melee weapons in VATS? Doesn't that contradict previous statements? What's going on there... his description of it did sound pretty neat though.
 
Brother None said:
Skin or meat.
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Who are you going to sell that to?
A Chinese Restaurant?!

I'm just kidding. That would actually make sense - with food being scarce and all.

I'll get you one of these days BN. Your brain's logic-generator(Yeah, I'm a medical student) can't possibly work 100% of the time.
 
Makagulfazel said:
I'll get you one of these days BN. Your brain's logic-generator(Yeah, I'm a medical student) can't possibly work 100% of the time.
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I'm a student of History. If there's anything we're good at, it's putting up a really convincing act that we're actually smarter than everyone else.

Part of the job for any social science, really :P
 
You know, I've actually bitten the bullet on most of the ways this game won't be like Fallout. But this bit about picking the NPCs pocket appears to suggest that you can't pick everybody's pockets, which is where they're really starting to piss in my Cheerios. I love pickpocketing in RPGs. I pickpocketed everybody in both previous games through mulitple play-throughs (though after a while I did stop stealing rocks out of children's pockets). I pickpocketed my way through Baldur's Gate I and II and Planescape Torment. If there was a single NPC in NeverWinter Nights with pickpocketable goods, I'd damn well like to know who, because I never found the bastard, though I never gave up trying.

And it's not just my love of quicksaving and restoring, either. I still remember the jolt of thrill I got when I realized I could plant an explosive on an enemy and then get into position for the fight that was going to break out. Anyplace I knew a fight would soon break out, nobody had any spare ammo or stimpacks.

It never even occurred to me that with all the other things being thrown out the window Bethesda would deny me the joy of robbing people blind. I guess we'll have to see, but this bodes ill.
 
JR Jansen said:
'Oblivion with guns is a compliment' ?

Kissed ass much ?
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I don't think that's "kissing ass," unless you seriously think that giving a compliment is the same thing as kissing ass, in which case you're one cynical motherfucker.

Truth be told there's a butt-load of people who actually enjoyed Oblivion, spent hundreds of hours in Oblivion, and think the idea of a post-modern Oblivion would be cool. That's not kissing ass, it's just a fact.


Johnny Angel said:
But this bit about picking the NPCs pocket appears to suggest that you can't pick everybody's pockets, which is where they're really starting to piss in my Cheerios.
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I think you're jumping to conclusions.
 
Tyshalle said:
<snip>

Truth be told there's a butt-load of people who actually enjoyed Oblivion, spent hundreds of hours in Oblivion, and think the idea of a post-modern Oblivion would be cool.
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Truth be told, if you could find "hundreds of hours" worth of different and entertaining things to do in Oblivion then you're definitely qualified to load up a butt.

Possibly your own, with your fingers.

:mrgreen:

From back when van buren was just rumors, I have envisioned Fallout 3 as being a 3d game (I actually think 1st person would be a cool option and I have for years now), yet never once have I wanted it to be like Oblivion or any of the other incredibly shallow FPP realtime "action rpg" games.

A fallout game requires depth and quality gameplay that survives the test of time.

Oblivion, as an RPG, has neither.

It has incredibly boring combat, even when compared to a turn based game.

It has the depth of a small paper cup you might find by the water cooler.

IT IS FAR FROM BEING THE BE ALL AND END ALL OF RPGS.

Comparing what was meant to be a classic, and deep, and thoughtful RPG to Oblivion is a huge insult.
 
Well I can only find one good thing in having fallout 3 being like oblivion, which is the modding support. Hopefully people will be able to turn the game in what it should have been!
 
Ranne said:
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but...
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I would really like to know how well FO3 will be sold without possibility of modding. Although the console players don' have that option, it's possible it might hurt sales a bit. Probably the majority of PC players might be disappointed by the lack of modding tools.
 
myn said:
Ranne said:
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but...
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I would really like to know how well FO3 will be sold without possibility of modding. Although the console players don' have that option, it's possible it might hurt sales a bit. Probably the majority of PC players might be disappointed by the lack of modding tools.
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That's true, but it's likely that modding tools will be distributed online
 
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