Fallout 3 speculation

[Abernathy]

Anyone who thinks for a moment that Bethesda are even considering a real Fallout 3 needs his head read. These guys used to make games, now they just make money. And that's exactly why they bought the FO franchise.

Seriously, can anyone imagine Beth suddenly doing a total turnaround from their currently successful formula of churning out dumbed-down 'rpg' games for the Xbox kiddies and actually producing a serious successor to the Fallout series?

Ain't gonna happen, sorry. The Fallout franchise is worth a lot of dollars and there are way more suckers out there than there are hardcore fans, so they can ignore us completely and still make a killing off the console kiddies no matter what crap they churn out, just because it has the brand 'Fallout' attached to it.

Things I'm 99% sure of:

* It will be 3D. (goes without saying really)
* It will be first-person
* It will be real-time
* It will be graphically as 'state-of-the-art' as they can make it
* It will have a basic plot, with side-quests
* It will be hyped to hell and back, deliver maybe 40% of what was promised and STILL be lapped up by the fanbois.
* There will be 'extras' available for purchase the day after the game ships.

I only say 99% because the only things that are certain in this life are death and taxes...

But Bethesda's chances of doing a decent job of Fallout 3 are about equal to a snowball's chance of surviving hell.

 

[Sander]

Gee, thanks for the information. Do you work at Bethesda perchance? Or have any information we don't?
No, no you don't. You can be pessimistic all you want, but posts like this are completely and utterly useless and have been repeated all across the board for, say, a year or so.

Also, your bit about 'it will sell because of the name' is also bullshit. Look at FOBOS and Tactics, they were not good sellers at all.

 

[Briosafreak]

Well we're going to read a lot more posts like that sander. Abernathy's post mimics many posts that i'm seeing all over the net, even on the TES boards. We're at a crossroad, if NMA is choosing, wisely in my view, to wait and see and leave the more vocal doubts to Rosh, that way it can say that it gave a chance and tried to be rigorous while giving voice to those that have seen much in past and learned from it, there will be a lot of roaming posters coming candidly with their doubts.

In my case, why do i think Bethesda got the license?

I asked this same question in December 2003, when they were hunting for BIS developers on the IP forum, in the days following the end of Van Buren and and the colective sacking of the devs. At that time they were asking a bunch of questions about the franchise, with a couple of Beth devs showing up side by side with producers claiming their status on beeing Fallout fans. I only got something resembling a reply when they anounced that the deal was made, in the hours after that, before the masses started to pour and all hell broke loose, when they were beeing very candid about the situation.

One guy in particular stated that they loved the TES games, but were getting tired of making the same thing, and needed something new, to keep the motivation in the team high and to explore new artistic venues. They were starting to feel burned out, and needed something new, Fallout was an established franchise so they didn't had to start from zero. And they had a few Fallout fans there, that were crazy to hop in into a Fallout game.

There's another reason, or so i suspect, and it's about business.

Diversification is always good business. That's why they cleared the waters with a developing branch and a publishing branch, for instance, betting on games outside of the TES franchise, and making deals with outside publishers for their own games, it's all about lowering risk and improving gains through diversification.

Again with Fallout they don't even need to start from scratch, and i guess they underestimated the potential reaction by Fallout fans, like Herve did, and overestimated what market analysts were saying about the franchise.

You see you guys and i live in a world apart from the business side of the gaming industry. If one tries to dwell a bit on that world, well, it's like entering a diferent and bizarre plain.

I once read in complete disbelief (it's on the news archive here at NMA, somewhere) a recognized market analyst from a big time consultant company claiming the future of Interplay was "much more positive" than what many were saying, since they were going to release a Baldurs Gate and Fallout games (FOBOS and dark alliance II) and each franchise had sold over half a million copies, so they couldn't be on the wrong path. Really. You will be surprised how many decisions in gaming companies are made taking into acount that sort of advice. It's crazy, i tell you...

Still in the end they are thinking that even if only two thirds of the X-Box and PC gamer that bought Oblivion buy Fallout3 they can live with that, and those new players will substitute the traditional Fallout fans, giving them space to continue to make games in the franchise in a diferent direction. Maybe they are right, this game is the result of PR genious, through the interviews Pete and Kathode placed in the casual gamers minds the conviction that they were going to play an Xgame , and even if the game turned out to be x minus 10, everyone fell for it. it's brilliant PR, don't underestimate them in that respect, and it might work again, this time with Fallout3.

We'll see, Abernathy and Sander, we'll see.

 

[Abernathy]

Gee, thanks for the information. Do you work at Bethesda perchance? Or have any information we don't?
No, no you don't. You can be pessimistic all you want, but posts like this are completely and utterly useless and have been repeated all across the board for, say, a year or so.

I take it that this was aimed at me?

Yeah, I'm a professional Bethesda Fanboy. I get my bills paid by calling them a pack of wankers. What got up your nose enough to give me shit?

Also, your bit about 'it will sell because of the name' is also bullshit. Look at FOBOS and Tactics, they were not good sellers at all.

Bollocks. They obviously sold well enough to be universally recognised (if derided) fairly universally. They were basically the same game on different platforms, yeah?

Anyway, I'll throw the ball back in your court and ask YOU why you think BethSoft can make a decent job of FO3. It's all very well to dump on a newbie, but you need a decent counter-argument really if anyone's gonna take you seriously.

 

[Montez]

All right, let's not let this get ugly guys. Debate and arguing is fine, but there's no reason to let it get personal and start flinging insults at each other.

 

[Sander]

I take it that this was aimed at me?

Yeah, I'm a professional Bethesda Fanboy. I get my bills paid by calling them a pack of wankers. What got up your nose enough to give me shit?

Since you're obviously not a Bethesda employee, you have no valid information whatsoever, which was my point. It's all just idle, baseless speculation.

Bollocks. They obviously sold well enough to be universally recognised (if derided) fairly universally. They were basically the same game on different platforms, yeah?

No, they did not sell well. Tactics had a huge number of pre-orders, but sold incredibly poorly once everyone got word that the game was a lot suckier and a lot less like Fallout than pretended.
Also, FOBOS was an incredibly poor seller. One of the reasons why IPLY went down.

Anyway, I'll throw the ball back in your court and ask YOU why you think BethSoft can make a decent job of FO3. It's all very well to dump on a newbie, but you need a decent counter-argument really if anyone's gonna take you seriously.

Why? Why not is a better question. They have the developers, they have made the remarks that they want to take this into a completely different direction than the TES series and they have been looking for people with prior knowledge of the Fallout series for artwork, design and programming.

But besides that, I'm not saying that they are going to make a good game, I'm saying that we have nowhere near decent information to make any claims about Fallout 3, and stating with certainty that they're going to make a crap game is useless and silly.

PS: I'm splitting this and moving it to the Fallout 3 forum.

 

[Montez]

But besides that, I'm not saying that they are going to make a good game, I'm saying that we have nowhere near decent information to make any claims about Fallout 3, and stating with certainty that they're going to make a crap game is useless and silly.

I agree with you about the "with certainty" and "crap game" part, but I don't think precedent is something that can or should be ignored. As developers they've made 6 Elder Scrolls games, all of which are more similar than not - they have evolved and changed but there haven't been any "wow we never would have expected this type of game from them!" moments; the basic gamplay, setting and system is nearly the same in Oblivion as it was in Arena. It seems to me that it's more likely than not that their next game will share a lot of those same characteristics (if it's made by that same group of designers/developers, that is). Of course we can't state anything about Fallout 3 with certainty, but it's only natural to use the previous games they've made as a foundation for expectations of it. It seems to me that calling that foundation baseless and silly is itself as silly as making an absolute statement about what the game will end up as.

 

[Lumpy]

Take this in a different direction than the TES series? Doubtful. After all, their driving simulators and horror action adventures were TES clones, right?

 

[Briosafreak]

Didn't they just published those, instead of developing the Lumpy? And those that they did worked on weren't on the action/RPG field, unlike Fallout3, so Montez example still stands.

 

[Ratty Sr.]

Take this in a different direction than the TES series? Doubtful. After all, their driving simulators and horror action adventures were TES clones, right?

What driving simulators? What horror action adventures? Bethesda never developed such games. They developed TES series, four crappy titles with Terminator license and two disastrous TES spin-offs. Their only works which can be considered remarkable are Arena and Daggerfall, and neither of these games has much in common with Fallout.

<snip>

Even though your conjectures are probably correct, there is really no point to your thread. Most realists in the community have been aware for a while now that the people currently in charge of design at BethSoft are complete idiots without the slightest clue about CRPG design. The Oblivion fiasco only confirms this fact. The concerns you listed have been brought up many times on this forum and the general consensus is that there is little point to discussing them ad nauseam until BethSoft provides some concrete information. The ball is now in their court.

 

[Roshambo]

We're at a crossroad, if NMA is choosing, wisely in my view, to wait and see and leave the more vocal doubts to Rosh, that way it can say that it gave a chance and tried to be rigorous while giving voice to those that have seen much in past and learned from it, there will be a lot of roaming posters coming candidly with their doubts.

I represent the pessimisstic side of gaming, that is seeing it go downhill in the mainstream, to arise wildly again with a new generation and a re-instilling of the genre from the indie developers, much like how it was in the 90's.

Quite likely, you can thank Jeff Vogel at Spidweb.com for keeping to real CRPG gameplay when nobody else can really bother to or manage to keep vapid publisher interest, and giving inspiration for others to do the same since both BioWare and Bethesda are too busy sucking themselves off to give any straight answers or competent design. This will lead to another Sir-Tech/TSR/Interplay/? changeover in hands in whom delivers great CRPGs as a rule, since it surely isn't either B-rating company listed above, no matter how B-B-Blizzardish these people want to develop and then act as if they are somehow still in the CRPG genre.

In my case, why do i think Bethesda got the license?

I asked this same question in December 2003, when they were hunting for BIS developers on the IP forum, in the days following the end of Van Buren and and the colective sacking of the devs. At that time they were asking a bunch of questions about the franchise, with a couple of Beth devs showing up side by side with producers claiming their status on beeing Fallout fans. I only got something resembling a reply when they anounced that the deal was made, in the hours after that, before the masses started to pour and all hell broke loose, when they were beeing very candid about the situation.

Well, from between the Bethesda programmers, the art team, Pete himself, Todd, and a few others, all I had gotten was "we're Fallout fans" and nothing really intelligible otherwise. So I guess the simple answer is: they're fucking clueless.

One guy in particular stated that they loved the TES games, but were getting tired of making the same thing, and needed something new, to keep the motivation in the team high and to explore new artistic venues. They were starting to feel burned out, and needed something new, Fallout was an established franchise so they didn't had to start from zero. And they had a few Fallout fans there, that were crazy to hop in into a Fallout game.

"Start from zero"? What kind of stupid mentality is that? You have to make sure you have done the research and a shitload more, and that might take more time than developing your own IP. Quite frankly, if their work sucked on its own merit without the crutch of the license (much like Morrowind and Oblivion would have been regarded as 3rd-rate ass if it hadn't the TES label - WRONG! Didn't work for Redguard and the other crappy TES adventure game.), then what makes them think that their work will be regarded any better than MicroForte's questionable attempt?

Or Chuck's?

Was Bethesda so fucking retarded, that they didn't notice the fiasco around that title, and that there was suspiciously no Fallout: POS forum on the Interplay forum list or had a placeholder and was entirely locked, when Lionheart had one with an assload of more activity, even though a dead forum was linked to by the official FOS site for an amusing time? And that FOS was a forbidden topic on the Interplay forums for the same period of time?

So much for research.

There's another reason, or so i suspect, and it's about business.

Diversification is always good business. That's why they cleared the waters with a developing branch and a publishing branch, for instance, betting on games outside of the TES franchise, and making deals with outside publishers for their own games, it's all about lowering risk and improving gains through diversification.

So that explains why all the developers I talked to, even Todd, were utterly clueless. I got it now.

Again with Fallout they don't even need to start from scratch, and i guess they underestimated the potential reaction by Fallout fans, like Herve did, and overestimated what market analysts were saying about the franchise.

Funny, which "market analysts" were these? The same ones hired by Herve to cook up the idiocy around FOS and FOOL? It is *so* wonderful to know that there's so many wonderful people at Bethesda that somehow can't be bothered to think for themselves.

And I think the reaction coming as a surprise to them kind of points out that the claims of being Fallout fans to any significant degree, makes the claim of being a Fallout fan a blatant lie.

So does bitching about Fallout's combat, citing FOT's problems in said combat, or some such idiocy as that, when discussing the CRPGs.

You see you guys and i live in a world apart from the business side of the gaming industry. If one tries to dwell a bit on that world, well, it's like entering a diferent and bizarre plain.

One filled with the business FAILURES from other industries and those too otherwise competent to work in a larger industry.

I'll say it right now - video games attract some of the sleaziest, stupidiest, and bottom of the barrel business majors too stupid to work in any other industry, yet bright enough to remember how to breathe. Easy cash on someone else's hard work.

And it shows.

I once read in complete disbelief (it's on the news archive here at NMA, somewhere) a recognized market analyst from a big time consultant company claiming the future of Interplay was "much more positive" than what many were saying, since they were going to release a Baldurs Gate and Fallout games (FOBOS and dark alliance II) and each franchise had sold over half a million copies, so they couldn't be on the wrong path. Really. You will be surprised how many decisions in gaming companies are made taking into acount that sort of advice. It's crazy, i tell you...

Yeah...Fallout + Console = $$$. Too bad these business dumbfucks don't really know anything about market reaction.

Still in the end they are thinking that even if only two thirds of the X-Box and PC gamer that bought Oblivion buy Fallout3 they can live with that, and those new players will substitute the traditional Fallout fans, giving them space to continue to make games in the franchise in a diferent direction. Maybe they are right, this game is the result of PR genious, through the interviews Pete and Kathode placed in the casual gamers minds the conviction that they were going to play an Xgame , and even if the game turned out to be x minus 10, everyone fell for it. it's brilliant PR, don't underestimate them in that respect, and it might work again, this time with Fallout3.

This time, they seem to figure that if they add a bit of "Bethesda" hype into the moronic "Console + Fallout = $$$" equasion, it's an even better win!

 

[Abernathy]

All right, let's not let this get ugly guys. Debate and arguing is fine, but there's no reason to let it get personal and start flinging insults at each other.

My apologies if I came across that way, I certainly didn't mean to. Neither did I take Sander's criticism of my post as a personal attack - he dumped on what I said, not who I am, and it was my intention to respond likewise to his words, not his personality.

Even though your conjectures are probably correct, there is really no point to your thread. Most realists in the community have been aware for a while now that the people currently in charge of design at BethSoft are complete idiots without the slightest clue about CRPG design. The Oblivion fiasco only confirms this fact. The concerns you listed have been brought up many times on this forum and the general consensus is that there is little point to discussing them ad nauseam until BethSoft provides some concrete information. The ball is now in their court.

Yeah, I know it's old ground - the phrase "Morrowind with guns" springs to mind from a few years back - but my original post was in response to another post in another thread and a kneejerk one at that, I admit.

But besides that, I'm not saying that they are going to make a good game, I'm saying that we have nowhere near decent information to make any claims about Fallout 3, and stating with certainty that they're going to make a crap game is useless and silly.

I envy you your optimism. I'd love to feel more positive, but I guess I'm caught up in this whole 'downward spiral' thing the entire gaming industry seems to be going through at the moment and I'm finding it very hard to see any lights at the end of the tunnel right now from the major players, with the possible exception of Piranha Bytes. Aside from that, it's up to the Indies and modding communities as far as I can see.

Anyway, I think we may have got off on the wrong foot and I hereby invite you over to my tipi to share a pipe of peace...