First Mothership Zeta pic at extreme low quality!

[lastofthelight]

-Stimpacks aside- (or even with the stimpacks), radiation in Fallout 1/2 is just sortof...there. Aside from the Glow, its /never/ an issue in fallout 1, and I can't remember a single time I ever had too much radiation in Fallout 2 at all, ever.

But not only is radiation an important factor in Fallout 3, but you actually need to /scavenge for food and water/ - Mad Max style, picking through the remains of burnt-out buildings. And there /are/ burnt out buildings...not just a few settlements with people in them (or other plot-areas) - but honest exploration.

While your in Vault 101, you are relatively safe and secure. Healing comes via drinking pure, free water from fountains. But when you leave 101, and your health runs down, and those stimpacks run out...what do you do? You have to ponder eating roach meat, or drinking radioactive toilet water. You can actually walk down burnt-out streets (not just fast-travel, or use some overhead map - though that is availiable too) - to your next destination.

Fallout 3 has a lot of little touches that Fallout 2, and even Fallout 1, lacked. I mean, there was food in those games as well, but...it wasn't important. Fallout 3 makes significant improvements over the earlier fallout games. Is it perfect? No, of course not. But no game is.

 

[Sander]

So ehm, what part of that wasn't possible in 1997 then?
Also, radiation is not an issue in Fallout 3 either. Food and water are largely inconsequential, you don't need to scavenge at all (the fact that you can doesn't mean you have to), and curing radiation is really, really easy.
Yes, it makes radiation slightly more important than Fallout 1 and 2. At the same time, it really isn't relevant and just becomes another game object you get to micromanage.

Also, while everything looked burnt-out and post-apocalyptic on the surface, it actually wasn't. Every building still had actual, functioning computers. How does that even make sense? The world never feels truly post-apocalyptic like Fallout, it feels like a slapdash wasteland with some random cool stuff thrown in.

Fallout 3 is stylistically completely inconsistent and a move away from Fallout 1.

The only improvements it makes are in graphical quality (although you could argue that Fallout's style was better), and perhaps in incorporating radiation. That's it.

 

[lastofthelight]

Fallout 1 and 2 both also had functional computers...not to mention functional robots, vaults, and water-purification systems working centuries later. All Fallout 3 did was add in the ability to actually /do/ something about it. Or do you think that the water chip in Necropolis was running on solar power, or 'New Reno' (or the Glow) just got all their power from nowhere?

It didn't make much sense in Fallout 1 or 2 either, but you go with it as a convention of the genre, and as a convention of the 50's vision of nuclear power as providing limitless energy. Also, the imrovements are far more then 'merely' graphical. Fallout 1 and 2 made no real effort to actually fill up their wilderness. The entire map of Fallout 3 has actual stuff in it, with actual ancient buildings.

 

[Sander]

Fallout 1 and 2 both also had functional computers...not to mention functional robots, vaults, and water-purification systems working centuries later. All Fallout 3 did was add in the ability to actually /do/ something about it. Or do you think that the water chip in Necropolis was running on solar power, or 'New Reno' (or the Glow) just got all their power from nowhere?

Perhaps you should've paid more attention to Fallout, then.
Large, self-sustaining, isolated complexes had working computers. Not every abandoned *shack*. Shady Sands, the Hub, all those places did not have power.

Fallout 2 is also widely lambasted for its departure in style, but even there most places that had no access to pre-war tech had no power.

It has nothing to do with a vision of limitless nuclear power, as one of the very key components of Fallout's world was that it had ended because people had ran into the limits of said power. In fact, power is hard to come by

It didn't make much sense in Fallout 1 or 2 either, but you go with it as a convention of the genre, and as a convention of the 50's vision of nuclear power as providing limitless energy. Also, the imrovements are far more then 'merely' graphical. Fallout 1 and 2 made no real effort to actually fill up their wilderness. The entire map of Fallout 3 has actual stuff in it, with actual ancient buildings.

Yes. This was intentional in Fallout 1 and 2, as they were set in an actual wasteland. The whole point was to have a feeling of a vast, empty wasteland. Changing that is not an improvement, it is a departure.

 

[egalor]

....Van Buren had significantly less stupid shit.

I cannot but concur, Sir!

I take off my hat to that.

 

[Ixyroth]

I don't even think about those kinds of things. I can't get past the fact that the gameplay itself is complete trash. The rest of it doesn't matter at that point.

It fails as an RPG. Window dressing.

It fails as a shooter, which is supposedly its backbone.

Unquestionably the worst shooter I've ever played, and I've played many.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

sander accurately responded to nearly everything you've said but i just wanted to add this:

Fallout 1 and 2 made no real effort to actually fill up their wilderness. The entire map of Fallout 3 has actual stuff in it, with actual ancient buildings.

maybe because FO3 geographically takes up a MUCH smaller area? like mostly within a single city? do you live in the States? travel around DC then travel around California and tell me the spaces in-between "stuff" are comparable. also, lol @ "ancient buildings".

 

[Makagulfazel]

Fallout 3 has a lot of little touches that Fallout 2, and even Fallout 1, lacked. I mean, there was food in those games as well, but...it wasn't important. Fallout 3 makes significant improvements over the earlier fallout games.

Fallout 1/2 had a lot of HUGE touches that Fallout 3 didn't have. Fallout 3's food was just as unimportant as the originals', so that's a fucked observation in the first place. I'm sure water sitting in a toilet for 200+ years is healthy...

"Significant improvements"? WOW! They added some useless, illogical bells and whistles and all of a sudden their game is better? "Significant improvements" should have delved into the realm of better writing and gameplay. What we got was a game that failed miserably(relative to the originals) in both of these aspects.

The dialogue and events that take place do not contain even 10% of the wit the originals had. A majority of the dialogue is basically a series of options: Yes, No, Maybe Later.

The gameplay is dull. You can easily cheat the VATS system by hiding behind a wall while the dumb-as-fuck AI lets you recharge your AP. You level up to become a jack-of-all trades, so it's pointless to play the game more than once. It's good vs. evil; mutants are so horrible! The BOS is the savior of the land! Woooo! Childish story. Choices and their consequences are a sham. I never felt rewarded for anything I did because barely anyone in the game reacts to your previous actions. If you kill an innocent in town, they say fuck it a few days later and let you return like nothing happened. Etc, etc.

Meh, I'm wasting my time... The game has a mature rating, but it's seems like a vast fraction of the story and gameplay ideas were written by a bunch of prepubescent punks. It's fairly sad when 40% of the hype for the game is focused on the gore. "OMG!!!! LOOK AT TEH MUTANT'S EYEBALLS!"

EDIT:
It's still a good game, by today's standard. But to say it had "significant improvements" over the originals because of little shit like food(which is equally unimportant) is stupid.

And now spaceships... Bethesda doesn't care about previous canon. All they're doing is lining their pockets with the next kid's money that wants to be dazzled by how awesome their alternate, challenge lacking reality is.

 

[UncannyGarlic]

The entire map of Fallout 3 has actual stuff in it, with actual ancient buildings.

Go to the area around the Bonyard (the city surrounding it) and enter an area now go and look at a city building in Fallout 3. Which looks closer to correct for when the game takes place, do the buildings in Fallout look closer to what they should in a world 86 years after nuclear armageddon or do the buildings in Fallout 3 look closer to what they should in a world 200 years after nuclear armageddon?
Some images for comparison:
Boneyard:____________city encounter:

in front of Washington Monument

And that's ignoring the wooden buildings which have been abbandoned for 200 years and yet are in fine condition with only some wear and tear on the paint jobs.

 

[Edmond Dantès]

I've never actually bothered with getting the DLC's. Heck, I haven't even finished Fallout 3, pretty soon it just became too much of a time waste to constantly kill things, kill more things, get loot sold, kill things, blow things up, dismember things, and murder things. The DLC's don't seem to add any diversity to that route, what with all the 'this one is going to be more action-oriented! hurrah for exploding heads!' going on in them. And all that 'morally grey' they've been touting is nonsense, at least I didn't encounter anything that got me thinking about what to do.

Some images for comparison:
[zip]

And that's ignoring the wooden buildings which have been abbandoned for 200 years and yet are in fine condition with only some wear and tear on the paint jobs.

Nice comparisons. What I would've really liked to have seen though, would've been something similar to this for example: http://www.flickr.com/photos/majchalak/2425995022/sizes/l/

And what was their reason again for Washington DC not being a big gaping hole in the ground? I think I kind of missed that. In fact, I kind of missed any sight of nuclear war. The world basically looks like World War II has just ended. I mean, take any random photo of Berlin in 1945, and you've got Fallout 3 right there. Well, without the tanks that is.

http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/6889/berlin1945il5.jpg

 

[Verevoof]

I was hoping that this Mothership Zeta thing was just a joke.

What does alien abductions and little green men have to do with Fallout? I thought it was supposed to be post-apocalyptic retro-America, not some outer space sci-fi romp.

If Bethesda wanted to make a game like this, why didn't they just do it? Why bring in Fallout at all?

 

[Public]

I've never actually bothered with getting the DLC's. Heck, I haven't even finished Fallout 3, pretty soon it just became too much of a time waste to constantly kill things, kill more things, get loot sold, kill things, blow things up, dismember things, and murder things.

Same here.
Still remember when I was trying to get to Rivet City. I've been encountering (more like crossing by, because there was no other way around) some bunch of Raiders or mutants, which I had to kill because they wouldn't just leave me the fuck alone.
I've even killed those mutants with some granades and a mini gun (with my very low Big Guns skill) without a sweat. Those retards were waiting up there so I can easily throw grenades at them or wait for my AP to re-charge. And it was all on the highest difficult level and 5th level of experience or so.

Nice comparisons. What I would've really liked to have seen though, would've been something similar to this for example

Something ala Mad Max.

And what was their reason again for Washington DC not being a big gaping hole in the ground?

That's how I imagined DC to be. All destroyed by the war. Washington should've been the biggest target during the war IMO.

The world basically looks like World War II has just ended. I mean, take any random photo of Berlin in 1945, and you've got Fallout 3 right there. Well, without the tanks that is.

Hell, even Warsaw looked more like after a nuclear armagedon than Beth's Washington DC.

Compared to the amounts of whining on Fallout 3 in general

People mostly don't "whine" anymore about FO3 here, they just make fun of it instead.

 

[Ausir]

The world basically looks like World War II has just ended.

Fallout 3's DC looks way better than Warsaw at the end of WW2, after conventional bombings.

 

[Edmond Dantès]

Well I guess Washington DC just wasn't that important. Nope, some random dunghill outside which became Megaton was a much more important target. Funny how the only crater I've encountered in the game is from an unexploded nuke.

When you think about it, natural disasters explain the haphazard and strange character of Fallout 3's damage patterns much better. Most areas seem to have been hit by earthquakes; would explain the ever-present road damage and unnatural hilly style of the region. Other areas seem to have been hit by a typhoon or flooding.

Heck, throw in a pandemic to depopulate the world, a splash of Resident Evil virus-crap, and you'd finally have an explanation for all the raiders constantly attacking the crap out of everyone even coming close, regardless of whether it's a deathtrap or just a harmless beggar. Raiders are just another variety of crazed zombie freaks. Point Lookout seems to add another genus of this species.

If Bethesda wanted to make a game like this, why didn't they just do it? Why bring in Fallout at all?

Because at this point in the game, they must've pretty much ran out of things to make you shoot at, both from this planet and from the entire Fallout universe. Besides, aliens sell, and they probably feel they've already shoehorned them in by making mutants look like orcs anyway. As for making them fit in with Fallout canon; the argumentation seems to mainly run on the fact that 'the previous games had them'. I guess we'll soon see a Fallout DLC running in the Doctor Who universe, as the previous game had an encounter with his phone booth as well.

Edit: In fact, perhaps Mothership Zeta is actually the Tardis, and you as the player will have to end up making the morally grey decision of wiping out their entire species so that the Doctor can smoke pipe and come up with new cool fashion trends while chillin' in his Tardis, or just kill the Doctor, multiple times depending on what reïncarnation we're talking about here. There'll probably be some middle ground everyone will take, like finding a place to settle for the aliens on earth so that the Doctor and the aliens become friends and everyone can party hard with alien chicks who have three boobs.

 

[Crni Vuk]

For those that call food and using randoom equipment in Fallout 3 a improvement probably likes to LARP in such RPGs alot I guess.

I seen many of such comparable comments about Oblivion and how well it is in the game that you can pick up a fork, or any kind of dish that is lying around in your range of sight and that the game actualy modeled all those things. THough I dont see any reall improvement in that since such kind of things do 1. not add anything to the actual gameplay, what is the difference if you carry 10 000 forks around with you or not (except that youre overburden) and 2. it takes a lot of time to do those things that could be spend elsewhere.

Think about if they would not use so much of their time to craete a micro-cosmos of useless items but concentrate more on story, believable characters, interesting dialogues and animations instead.

Fallout 1/2 did not need to model every kind of item or make it possible for the player to pick up, why? Cause it makes no difference to the game. Thus why you cant shoot a tree (which some people seriously see as a issue ...).

Its sad to see that people call such Sandbox games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 RPGs.

 

[Alphadrop]

Well I guess Washington DC just wasn't that important. Nope, some random dunghill outside which became Megaton was a much more important target. Funny how the only crater I've encountered in the game is from an unexploded nuke.

There are a few more about. There is one that is actually behind a factory in DC that seems to have suffered little to no damage despite being right next to a nuke crater.
Guess good ol' American buildings could take the heat of a small sun and gale force winds in their stride.

Oddly on the size of the craters, crashed aircraft make bigger craters than nukes and seem to have higher amounts of leftover radiation judging by a crashed fighter jet in a DC street.

 

[Ulysses]

I always found it amusing how the White House was demolished and left that crater but the buildings around it are largely intact.

 

[Crni Vuk]

Well I guess Washington DC just wasn't that important. Nope, some random dunghill outside which became Megaton was a much more important target. Funny how the only crater I've encountered in the game is from an unexploded nuke.

There are a few more about. There is one that is actually behind a factory in DC that seems to have suffered little to no damage despite being right next to a nuke crater.
Guess good ol' American buildings could take the heat of a small sun and gale force winds in their stride.

Oddly on the size of the craters, crashed aircraft make bigger craters than nukes and seem to have higher amounts of leftover radiation judging by a crashed fighter jet in a DC street.

What is more interesting though is that you can in FINO 3 (Fallout in name only) discover and visit the "white house" which was according to Bethesda directly hit by a nuclear weapon so naturaly you have where the building was only a big gaping crater though now the interesting part, the buildings sorounding it are largely "intact" (even with imergency lights and working computers in the tunnels under the white house!).

Now one can argue "omg god stop whining its just a game blaargh love killing muttant craps and aspolode their heads etc.". But to say that to me at least it never seemed like Fallout 1 was some kind of setting that would throw you in a post apoc world where you encounter every 5 a popular building that was blown to shreds for the cool and inowashun factor. The desolated feeling of the wasteland was much more appealing for a post apoc game in my eyes at least.

 

[Public]

What is more interesting though is that you can in FINO 3 (Fallout in name only) discover and visit the "white house" which was according to Bethesda directly hit by a nuclear weapon

Lately I've been thinking "Maybe people at Bethesda don't know what damage a nuclear weapon would make?"

But then I stop a few seconds, forget about it and start thinking about much more interesting things...OH LOOK! Michael Jackson is dead!