Misanthropicus Grandiosus
First time out of the vault
Well first of all, let me state that yes I do like the game, and some of the ideas were really well done, whilst others are severely lacking compared to the previous games. (And boo all you want, if you title something as the sequel to an awesome series, you’re not supposed to do something completely different…)
I’d like to focus a little on the later and see what you guys think. I’ll also state that I’m a huge fan of the original works, and I’ve played both at least 50 times from beginning to end..
To be honest, overall, the game is good, noone should really argue that. However I do feel that the guys making it were running out of ideas or simply started getting lazy at parts.
(I’ll try not to include spoilers, though read with caution if you haven’T finished the game yet.)
1. Gameplay…
All I have to say is… WTF? ... Okay I knew they would be using the oblivion engine, but still… all the more reason to make a better game.. the engine was there, all they needed is 3d modeling and proper scripting/game dialogues.
a) SPECIAL
Now this is just outright hilarious… or sad depending on your perspective. I welcomed it’s implementation, however it could have been done much better.
First off, where are the ‘traits’ you gain right off the bat? I would’ve welcomed Gifted for one… one I always selected in the original games.
Okay swallow that, moving on, first thing you do is select your basic stat points. Nothing wrong there, however as I will discuss later, I simply didn’t feel the impact on the game. Not to mention luck… the only goal of which is to increase your chance of a critical hit…
Tag skills… okay, yes tag skills are welcomed and implemented… however tagging means nothing more then a 15 point bonus, again quite unlike the originals, where a tag skill increased two points for one skill point until it reached 100% or near it. On that note 100 skill points maximum? Oh yes silly me I forgot lvl cap at 20… wait what?... 20??? I thought this was supposed to be a long game… nevermind moving on…
Leveling… This was just plain weird… a little off topic here, but if they kept the battle sequence starting and ending sounds for VATS, why didn’t they put in the original chirping sound from the game for when you gain a level? That drumroll is just annoying… and on that same note why does the game force me to take a level in the middle of a friggin action sequence??
Okay again we swallow like good little boys and do our leveling. Nothing special here, except wait… perks? Right of the bat? What?... Oh right silly me lvl20 cap, you get a perk with each level… but why do you choose the skill points first and the perk afterwards? If you choose a perk that would influence your number of given skillpoints, that should take effect right away and not only when you next level.(This is just my minor sillyness really no big deal.)
Okay, moving on to skill points… They don’t quite have the serious effect I was expecting… I mean at close range, I could snipe someone in the head with just as much a success rate when my small arms skill was at 35 as when it was at 100… and trust me most of the combat will be done close range… unless you consider the odd supermutant with a rocketlauncher sniping you from the top of some ruins. The next thing is with the other skills… repair… I never once had to repair a broken generator or a computer except where it was preprogrammed separately… the whole skill was a waste of points. That includes Science and Lockpick on the double! The increments for the difficulty of locks and terminal hacks go from 25, 50, 75, and 100.. and if you have enough skill points you automatically succeed… yes… WTF?
b) VATS, combat
I wasn’t expecting much from a first person shooter (Because I refuse to call this a pure RPG no matter what anyone says.) to be honest… but this is just way too easy. Those who complain about the game being too hard are doing something very wrong… I –FINISHED- the game with a lvl 14 character… Later I found myself asking why I had made 80 savegames for this. I only died once during the entire game. No it wasn’t set to easy, and I didn’t even find it just mildly challenging.
The VATS implementation really was a pleasant surprise, I have to say that is one aspect that’s well done. The only one thing I found myself bothered by, is if used crouching behind a table or other object, it only takes into account your field of view for the hit chance percentages, and often you end up grinding tens of bullets into the edge of the table, which is especially annoying with something like the minigun which just eats bullets like there’s no tomorrow.
For those of you who complain that shots miss outside of VATS, there’s nothing wrong with that. That is the way it should be with a supposed RPG as you have a miss chance depending on your skill with the used firearm.
Overall I have to say VATS is probably the highlight of the game. It’s cleverly implemented and usable aside from the above mentioned glitch.
(Though I still say I would’ve preferred an overhead view like in Neverwinter Nights combined with the hex grid and turn based combat for the simple reason that it actually gives you a reason to think before you do something and not just vacantly shoot at stuff and flee for cover before they can shoot back.)
The only drawback in combat is the level of difficulty… on normal difficulty level, heading into Little Lamplight and Murder Pass beyond it, I was scared sh*tless as the kids were talking about man eating monsters, I was expecting a full blown deathclaw hive at least… Getting supermutants instead wouldn’t have been bad if they actually posed a challenge. I went in with 70-something stimpaks, and came out with 65 or so when I woke in the Enclave… I didn’t die not once…
I’m not sure on this so correct me if I’m wrong, but I think they put in the ‘enemy throttling’ from Oblivion, because going down to Rivet city past supermutants, killing them with just two hits of the Rock-IT to the head with a –LVL9- (!!!!) character just seems to be wrong to me… I mean they should’ve torn me to shreds… Wherever you go in the game, whatever your character level, I haven’t met a single instance where I was hard pressed for health or stimpacks. (Okay in Minefield but that was simply because I ran into mines before I noticed them, once I backed off and approached from a different angle it was a piece of cake.)
I won’t comment on the lack of eye and groin shots, or the unkillable children… these are obvious flaws that Bethesda left in in fear of soccermoms… would be nice if they released an unofficial patch to fix that though…(Not entirely sure why they fear them though if it’s a game rated Mature.)
c) Storyline, depth, NPC interactions
I have to say that when I began the game, I was absolutely thrilled. The screens and the intro all suggested a tightly fitting well built game. In the end, that turns out to be a little weak towards the ends, and based on the amount of detail that went into the intro and opening/menu screens, I would’ve expected much more depth.
The main storyline is okay. It starts off rather strong, and I particularily like how they solved the character creation. It is tightly fitting, right up to the point when you arrive in the enclave… from then on it goes downhill, and ends outright disappointingly. I won’t go into much detail not to spoil it for folks that might want to read this and haven’t finished the game yet. Let it be enough that I would’ve expected at least a challenge in the Enclave, not to mention at the end when you march in to take over the purifier. Basically if you stick to the main quest after leaving the Enclave, all you do is –WALK- right up to the end… there are three guys you need to kill, but if you just take cover the npcs will kill them…By then I was –praying- for that unstested commie-killer robot to turn against us for a boss fight… but no… sadly the ending is bleak and simple.
The sidequests are decent, though there are some odd ones here and there… like the android quest… to this point I have no idea when I even learned about it… Often quests came into my pipboy or got ticked off before I actually learned the information needed for them. For example locating the last vault, I opened up the BOS terminal, and started reading in order… I didn’t even read about the vault I needed yet, but already I got the task complete message.
NPCs are put together decently, and it is obvious that Bethesda tried to improve on Oblivion here, and while I have to say the progress is noticeable, the dialogues leave a lot to be desired to come to a fallout level. I also miss accents. While most NPCs actually do seem to have somewhat of a personality, (for example all ghouls have the personality of sandpaper) I don’t believe everyone speaks perfect English… where are the accents? That is however the least of the problems, the other is the actual dialogue… “Have you seen my father?” Who is he? How does he look? “Middle-aged guy”.. .there are hoardes of middle-aged people in the game… nevermind… it simply lacks detail.
On that note, overall while there are hoardes of locations, it actually feels to me as if they tried to compensate for the lack of depth with the amount of places avalible to visit. For example when the girl in Megaton asked me to visit the Rob-CO factory, I was expecting something exciting… instead the place is filled by nothing but roaches and molerats… okay there are deactivated robots too… The entire place has one usable terminal, that has the amazing amount of information… *drumroll* of a short welcome to the only worker who was supposed to run the factory… When you plug in the module, OMG unexpected… the robots attack you… (Unless you hack the mainframe that is which is in’t much of a challenge if you have enough science skillpoints.) The entire place is bleak and uninteresting. Compared to places like the SAD or The Glow, these were a big disappointment, with little to no actual valuable loot inside. That includes the vaults aswell…
Despite that there were parts which were just right, like the scene in the vault when you find your father, or Vault 106 with the visions and psychotic gas. But parts like the Enclave,BOS,Rob-CO, and a bunch of others felt way too slapped-together, as if only there to fill space.
The main wasteland turned out okay, though there was a slightly more lush vegetation in the original games, and for me, the bleak loneliness just made it a chore to go to any new place on foot. I simply didn’t feel like doing it, and contemplated just stopping playing on several occasions.
Of course it’s supposed to be bleak, but the total lack of actually valuable loot just baffles me… I mean… It’s one thing in the wasteland… But in a vault? Or the BOS? (There was –some- loot in the Enclave at least) And the prices…1000 caps for a good plasma rifle?... Come ON!
At this point I’d like to comment on the lack of different weapons. Put simply, there are rather few weapon types avalible ingame. Have a look at how many different small guns there were in F1 or F2 and compare it with F3… same goes for chems and other objects. And still on the note of weapons… weapons wear… I mean come –on- it’s a GAME not realism simulation… and even in reality they wouldn’t be deteriorating so quickly… not to mention that without several other guns of the same type you have no chance of repairing anything to full, and again not to mention that I found no merchant in the game who could repair items to full ‘health’(admittedly I haven’t visited all the places yet so correct me if I’m wrong here).
The ending… aside from lacking even a basic boss-fight, I tend to believe perhaps the lie about more then 200 different endings… however… the ending slideshow is just horrible. It doesn’t say much about what you did outside of the main quest, while if you actually want to take your time and –play- the game you’ll be doing a lot of sidequests and saving villages and the sort. F1 and F2 both commented on every single place you visited… I was very disappointed in this tidbit lacking…
Item descriptions! Totally lacking. Bartering is just plain annoying without seeing what is what exactly, you just see a name without any background information, or the sort. Again not very necessary, but I miss them.
Random encounters!! They could have totally been implemented with the fast travel idea. I’m baffled as to why they omitted them completely, I doubt it would’ve been so hard to program them.
Peaceful solutions… where are they? This game –cannot- be finished without firing a bullet… if you un, most things can catch up to you and slice you to shreds from behind while you run. And using the speech skill earns you a little bonus at most, not worth the effort.
Pip boy… man this thing got overcomplicated… it looks okay, but there are just way too many buttons to navigate through. Yes it is logical, but it could’ve been much easier to navigate through them. Why weren’t four screens enough? Why did each have to have several sub-screens?
Overall I don’t think I will be playing this game near as much as I played the original titles.
2. Appearances
Honestly, I’m very pleased with the intro and the movies, as well as in-game visuals. The energy weapons and grenades, explosions and fire are all captured very nicely. What’s more I’m –very- pleased that they managed to get rid of the fish-eye perspective that I so hated in Oblivion as well as many other games. The only downside is the choppyness of the game engine. I’m running dual ATI 3870 X2 cards (2 gig of video memory, 4 GPUs total) and true I’M playing at 1400x something resolution with all details on full, but the way the game speeds up in tight spaces and incredibly slows down in the large open wastes is just horrible. (And this is a rig that runs Crysis at 2000+resolutions at a playable speed, true with lowered detail settings.)
Another thing, which might be just a driver bug on my part, I couldn’t for the life of me get anti-aliasing to work. Still these are minor issues, and overall I am very pleased with the look of the game.
The only design-faults I can find are minor, but examples follow: Molerats… they are supposed to have fur… why are they naked and uglier then a deathclaw? The supermutants are decent, though they don’t seem to have enough of that ‘funny-dumb-big-ass-guy’ look they were famous for in the original games. Some items have been completely redesigned. I’m not sure if F3 plays in an alternate dimension but if plasma grenades had an established look in f1 and f2 why couldn’t they copy those like they did with the vault chairs air vents and the sort? Centaurs are just as ugly as they’re supposed to be, though I have yet to meet any floaters. Or Aliens for that matter.
Pip boy… man this thing got overcomplicated… it looks okay, but there are just way too many buttons to navigate through. Yes it is logical, but it could’ve been much easier to navigate through them. Why weren’t four screens enough? Why did each have to have several sub-screens?
Anyways, all in all I have to say that this game is good. It’s not spectacular, but it’s good, and deserving of the Fallout title. Though I may have second thoughts about calling it a sequel, it is definitely more worthy then FOBOS. The visuals are aside from minor glitches rather impressive, and it is fun to play if you get to playing it without expecting something better then Fallout 2. Fallout 2 is still superior bar it’s graphics. However I doubt it’s replayability really… I’m trying a char with totally different stats from my first to see just how much of a difference it makes.
Any of your thoughts and vies are welcome, but I do stress this is not a flame post, simply a collection of criticism about a game that to me feels like something that started out good before the devs got lazy.
Please excuse any typos I left i nthere.
I’d like to focus a little on the later and see what you guys think. I’ll also state that I’m a huge fan of the original works, and I’ve played both at least 50 times from beginning to end..
To be honest, overall, the game is good, noone should really argue that. However I do feel that the guys making it were running out of ideas or simply started getting lazy at parts.
(I’ll try not to include spoilers, though read with caution if you haven’T finished the game yet.)
1. Gameplay…
All I have to say is… WTF? ... Okay I knew they would be using the oblivion engine, but still… all the more reason to make a better game.. the engine was there, all they needed is 3d modeling and proper scripting/game dialogues.
a) SPECIAL
Now this is just outright hilarious… or sad depending on your perspective. I welcomed it’s implementation, however it could have been done much better.
First off, where are the ‘traits’ you gain right off the bat? I would’ve welcomed Gifted for one… one I always selected in the original games.
Okay swallow that, moving on, first thing you do is select your basic stat points. Nothing wrong there, however as I will discuss later, I simply didn’t feel the impact on the game. Not to mention luck… the only goal of which is to increase your chance of a critical hit…
Tag skills… okay, yes tag skills are welcomed and implemented… however tagging means nothing more then a 15 point bonus, again quite unlike the originals, where a tag skill increased two points for one skill point until it reached 100% or near it. On that note 100 skill points maximum? Oh yes silly me I forgot lvl cap at 20… wait what?... 20??? I thought this was supposed to be a long game… nevermind moving on…
Leveling… This was just plain weird… a little off topic here, but if they kept the battle sequence starting and ending sounds for VATS, why didn’t they put in the original chirping sound from the game for when you gain a level? That drumroll is just annoying… and on that same note why does the game force me to take a level in the middle of a friggin action sequence??
Okay again we swallow like good little boys and do our leveling. Nothing special here, except wait… perks? Right of the bat? What?... Oh right silly me lvl20 cap, you get a perk with each level… but why do you choose the skill points first and the perk afterwards? If you choose a perk that would influence your number of given skillpoints, that should take effect right away and not only when you next level.(This is just my minor sillyness really no big deal.)
Okay, moving on to skill points… They don’t quite have the serious effect I was expecting… I mean at close range, I could snipe someone in the head with just as much a success rate when my small arms skill was at 35 as when it was at 100… and trust me most of the combat will be done close range… unless you consider the odd supermutant with a rocketlauncher sniping you from the top of some ruins. The next thing is with the other skills… repair… I never once had to repair a broken generator or a computer except where it was preprogrammed separately… the whole skill was a waste of points. That includes Science and Lockpick on the double! The increments for the difficulty of locks and terminal hacks go from 25, 50, 75, and 100.. and if you have enough skill points you automatically succeed… yes… WTF?
b) VATS, combat
I wasn’t expecting much from a first person shooter (Because I refuse to call this a pure RPG no matter what anyone says.) to be honest… but this is just way too easy. Those who complain about the game being too hard are doing something very wrong… I –FINISHED- the game with a lvl 14 character… Later I found myself asking why I had made 80 savegames for this. I only died once during the entire game. No it wasn’t set to easy, and I didn’t even find it just mildly challenging.
The VATS implementation really was a pleasant surprise, I have to say that is one aspect that’s well done. The only one thing I found myself bothered by, is if used crouching behind a table or other object, it only takes into account your field of view for the hit chance percentages, and often you end up grinding tens of bullets into the edge of the table, which is especially annoying with something like the minigun which just eats bullets like there’s no tomorrow.
For those of you who complain that shots miss outside of VATS, there’s nothing wrong with that. That is the way it should be with a supposed RPG as you have a miss chance depending on your skill with the used firearm.
Overall I have to say VATS is probably the highlight of the game. It’s cleverly implemented and usable aside from the above mentioned glitch.
(Though I still say I would’ve preferred an overhead view like in Neverwinter Nights combined with the hex grid and turn based combat for the simple reason that it actually gives you a reason to think before you do something and not just vacantly shoot at stuff and flee for cover before they can shoot back.)
The only drawback in combat is the level of difficulty… on normal difficulty level, heading into Little Lamplight and Murder Pass beyond it, I was scared sh*tless as the kids were talking about man eating monsters, I was expecting a full blown deathclaw hive at least… Getting supermutants instead wouldn’t have been bad if they actually posed a challenge. I went in with 70-something stimpaks, and came out with 65 or so when I woke in the Enclave… I didn’t die not once…
I’m not sure on this so correct me if I’m wrong, but I think they put in the ‘enemy throttling’ from Oblivion, because going down to Rivet city past supermutants, killing them with just two hits of the Rock-IT to the head with a –LVL9- (!!!!) character just seems to be wrong to me… I mean they should’ve torn me to shreds… Wherever you go in the game, whatever your character level, I haven’t met a single instance where I was hard pressed for health or stimpacks. (Okay in Minefield but that was simply because I ran into mines before I noticed them, once I backed off and approached from a different angle it was a piece of cake.)
I won’t comment on the lack of eye and groin shots, or the unkillable children… these are obvious flaws that Bethesda left in in fear of soccermoms… would be nice if they released an unofficial patch to fix that though…(Not entirely sure why they fear them though if it’s a game rated Mature.)
c) Storyline, depth, NPC interactions
I have to say that when I began the game, I was absolutely thrilled. The screens and the intro all suggested a tightly fitting well built game. In the end, that turns out to be a little weak towards the ends, and based on the amount of detail that went into the intro and opening/menu screens, I would’ve expected much more depth.
The main storyline is okay. It starts off rather strong, and I particularily like how they solved the character creation. It is tightly fitting, right up to the point when you arrive in the enclave… from then on it goes downhill, and ends outright disappointingly. I won’t go into much detail not to spoil it for folks that might want to read this and haven’t finished the game yet. Let it be enough that I would’ve expected at least a challenge in the Enclave, not to mention at the end when you march in to take over the purifier. Basically if you stick to the main quest after leaving the Enclave, all you do is –WALK- right up to the end… there are three guys you need to kill, but if you just take cover the npcs will kill them…By then I was –praying- for that unstested commie-killer robot to turn against us for a boss fight… but no… sadly the ending is bleak and simple.
The sidequests are decent, though there are some odd ones here and there… like the android quest… to this point I have no idea when I even learned about it… Often quests came into my pipboy or got ticked off before I actually learned the information needed for them. For example locating the last vault, I opened up the BOS terminal, and started reading in order… I didn’t even read about the vault I needed yet, but already I got the task complete message.
NPCs are put together decently, and it is obvious that Bethesda tried to improve on Oblivion here, and while I have to say the progress is noticeable, the dialogues leave a lot to be desired to come to a fallout level. I also miss accents. While most NPCs actually do seem to have somewhat of a personality, (for example all ghouls have the personality of sandpaper) I don’t believe everyone speaks perfect English… where are the accents? That is however the least of the problems, the other is the actual dialogue… “Have you seen my father?” Who is he? How does he look? “Middle-aged guy”.. .there are hoardes of middle-aged people in the game… nevermind… it simply lacks detail.
On that note, overall while there are hoardes of locations, it actually feels to me as if they tried to compensate for the lack of depth with the amount of places avalible to visit. For example when the girl in Megaton asked me to visit the Rob-CO factory, I was expecting something exciting… instead the place is filled by nothing but roaches and molerats… okay there are deactivated robots too… The entire place has one usable terminal, that has the amazing amount of information… *drumroll* of a short welcome to the only worker who was supposed to run the factory… When you plug in the module, OMG unexpected… the robots attack you… (Unless you hack the mainframe that is which is in’t much of a challenge if you have enough science skillpoints.) The entire place is bleak and uninteresting. Compared to places like the SAD or The Glow, these were a big disappointment, with little to no actual valuable loot inside. That includes the vaults aswell…
Despite that there were parts which were just right, like the scene in the vault when you find your father, or Vault 106 with the visions and psychotic gas. But parts like the Enclave,BOS,Rob-CO, and a bunch of others felt way too slapped-together, as if only there to fill space.
The main wasteland turned out okay, though there was a slightly more lush vegetation in the original games, and for me, the bleak loneliness just made it a chore to go to any new place on foot. I simply didn’t feel like doing it, and contemplated just stopping playing on several occasions.
Of course it’s supposed to be bleak, but the total lack of actually valuable loot just baffles me… I mean… It’s one thing in the wasteland… But in a vault? Or the BOS? (There was –some- loot in the Enclave at least) And the prices…1000 caps for a good plasma rifle?... Come ON!
At this point I’d like to comment on the lack of different weapons. Put simply, there are rather few weapon types avalible ingame. Have a look at how many different small guns there were in F1 or F2 and compare it with F3… same goes for chems and other objects. And still on the note of weapons… weapons wear… I mean come –on- it’s a GAME not realism simulation… and even in reality they wouldn’t be deteriorating so quickly… not to mention that without several other guns of the same type you have no chance of repairing anything to full, and again not to mention that I found no merchant in the game who could repair items to full ‘health’(admittedly I haven’t visited all the places yet so correct me if I’m wrong here).
The ending… aside from lacking even a basic boss-fight, I tend to believe perhaps the lie about more then 200 different endings… however… the ending slideshow is just horrible. It doesn’t say much about what you did outside of the main quest, while if you actually want to take your time and –play- the game you’ll be doing a lot of sidequests and saving villages and the sort. F1 and F2 both commented on every single place you visited… I was very disappointed in this tidbit lacking…
Item descriptions! Totally lacking. Bartering is just plain annoying without seeing what is what exactly, you just see a name without any background information, or the sort. Again not very necessary, but I miss them.
Random encounters!! They could have totally been implemented with the fast travel idea. I’m baffled as to why they omitted them completely, I doubt it would’ve been so hard to program them.
Peaceful solutions… where are they? This game –cannot- be finished without firing a bullet… if you un, most things can catch up to you and slice you to shreds from behind while you run. And using the speech skill earns you a little bonus at most, not worth the effort.
Pip boy… man this thing got overcomplicated… it looks okay, but there are just way too many buttons to navigate through. Yes it is logical, but it could’ve been much easier to navigate through them. Why weren’t four screens enough? Why did each have to have several sub-screens?
Overall I don’t think I will be playing this game near as much as I played the original titles.
2. Appearances
Honestly, I’m very pleased with the intro and the movies, as well as in-game visuals. The energy weapons and grenades, explosions and fire are all captured very nicely. What’s more I’m –very- pleased that they managed to get rid of the fish-eye perspective that I so hated in Oblivion as well as many other games. The only downside is the choppyness of the game engine. I’m running dual ATI 3870 X2 cards (2 gig of video memory, 4 GPUs total) and true I’M playing at 1400x something resolution with all details on full, but the way the game speeds up in tight spaces and incredibly slows down in the large open wastes is just horrible. (And this is a rig that runs Crysis at 2000+resolutions at a playable speed, true with lowered detail settings.)
Another thing, which might be just a driver bug on my part, I couldn’t for the life of me get anti-aliasing to work. Still these are minor issues, and overall I am very pleased with the look of the game.
The only design-faults I can find are minor, but examples follow: Molerats… they are supposed to have fur… why are they naked and uglier then a deathclaw? The supermutants are decent, though they don’t seem to have enough of that ‘funny-dumb-big-ass-guy’ look they were famous for in the original games. Some items have been completely redesigned. I’m not sure if F3 plays in an alternate dimension but if plasma grenades had an established look in f1 and f2 why couldn’t they copy those like they did with the vault chairs air vents and the sort? Centaurs are just as ugly as they’re supposed to be, though I have yet to meet any floaters. Or Aliens for that matter.
Pip boy… man this thing got overcomplicated… it looks okay, but there are just way too many buttons to navigate through. Yes it is logical, but it could’ve been much easier to navigate through them. Why weren’t four screens enough? Why did each have to have several sub-screens?
Anyways, all in all I have to say that this game is good. It’s not spectacular, but it’s good, and deserving of the Fallout title. Though I may have second thoughts about calling it a sequel, it is definitely more worthy then FOBOS. The visuals are aside from minor glitches rather impressive, and it is fun to play if you get to playing it without expecting something better then Fallout 2. Fallout 2 is still superior bar it’s graphics. However I doubt it’s replayability really… I’m trying a char with totally different stats from my first to see just how much of a difference it makes.
Any of your thoughts and vies are welcome, but I do stress this is not a flame post, simply a collection of criticism about a game that to me feels like something that started out good before the devs got lazy.
Please excuse any typos I left i nthere.
