Bethesda didn't lose any chance in making Fallout 3 as opposed to a new post-apocalyptic series. I realize that those of you who think they're bending the series over and brutally raping it may not be particularly pleased with their reasoning for getting the Fallout license, but here's the most obvious reason it went down like it did:The Dutch Ghost said:
1. Press. It's the difference between "Read more about [Name], Bethesda's new post-apocalyptic RPG!" and "Read more about Bethesda's Fallout 3!" Now, Fallout wasn't some huge blockbuster everyone played, but it's also something more than just a cult classic, so even if someone had absolutely no idea what Fallout was could find out fairly quickly that it was a CRPG series held in extremely high regard. It's just an advertising thing.
2. Assuming it wasn't all #1: they wanted to make a game in Fallout's setting. Not kind of like it, but exactly like it, because they're fans. You know, maybe not "true fans" or "real fans" like you guys, but they could've just liked the setting and wanted to do their own thing with it.
flat6 said:
All normal cars are designed that way. This is movie/videogame rules. In real life, a car wouldn't blow up because you shot it a bunch or knocked it around a bit. Not that that makes it right, but if you want an explanation, it's because most people are dumb enough to expect cars in games to blow up if they keep shooting them, and Fallout's cars were powered by fusion, so... that's where it comes from. I'm more concerned about why they had to trigger a nuclear explosion to kill two ants, myself.
What follows will be long.
I've sat back and watched this thread trudge along for a bit more now. At this point, I see my previous suggestion of helping make the game the best it can be is never going to happen. The huge "DON'T COLLABORATE" post was pretty crazy, like someone was really concerned that some of you might try to get Bethesda to have an accurate portrayal of the Fallout setting, which is bad for some reason. Actually, I'm aware of the reason. I'll just toss this out here: this game is going to be extremely high rated and sell a ton regardless of what you guys do, even the setting is completely different from Fallout's. That's because it made by Bethesda, which is considered the CRPG maker in the market right now - I know you guys don't agree, and I'm not particularly fond of TES either, but that's the way it is. Of course, as I said, I'm beyond expecting any of you to try to steer Bethesda towards keeping the setting intact.
Now, before I go any further, I'm going to say that a few (read: not all, most of you are fine) of you are far too hostile to criticism (or agreeing with Bethesda). For example, don't call people "plants" for thinking Bethesda's game looks good. I'm not sure whether or not those of you who do this actually think Bethesda's hiring people to come here and argue with you, or that no one could possibly think the game actually looks good unless they were from Bethesda, or whether it's just a vapid insult. Not calling people "fucking stupid" would be nice, too, though let's stick to the completely psycho-irrational name-calling before we try to get rid of the generic "I disagree with you so hard raaaaaargh" name-calling.
Anyway.
The fundamental disagreement here is pretty obvious - the "yea" people, largely people who signed up to say it, think the setting is more important than anything else - again, effectively Tycho of PA's opinion:
The "nays," by and large the entire forum here, think that the gameplay is equally important as both are part of the original design, as outlined here.
This should simply be a disagreement. I'm fine with people who think the gameplay is equally important thinking Fallout 3 is a piece of shit abomination. I'm fine with them wanting nothing to do with the game and actively hoping it fails miserably. An opinion is an opinion. I think it's silly - just an opinion - but I don't care enough to argue about which opinion is better.
What is grating here - other than the ridiculous ad hominem - is the idea that Fallout 3 is actually objectively an unworthy sequel, or whatever other variations on that there have been. First, there's the semantic side. It's a patently false assertion. It is quite obviously objectively true that Fallout 3 is not following Fallout's design. I mean, I shouldn't even have to explain why. It is not objectively true that Fallout 3 is not worthy of the Fallout name, unless you define "not worthy" to be "not following the original design," which no one does. Whether or not you think it's a worthy sequel is irrelevant; you cannot say that it objectively goes one way or the other. You guys are going to think it's not a worthy sequel because it doesn't follow the game design (and possibly for setting issues, if they aren't cleaned up by release), but plenty of people will think it's a worthy sequel if it just has the same atmosphere, a close or near-close setting, and lives up to the previous games in terms of quality (i.e., quality of the product, not quality of "turn-based isometric hexagonal combat," which obviously is going to be rather nonexistent in Fallout 3).
Now, before the next part, let me reiterate that I'm fine with the opinion that the gameplay model is just as important as the setting, atmosphere, tone, and whatever else stuff. I don't want this to be misinterpreted as thinking that I'm not. I am.
The next thing is that the idea that the design plan is the end-all be-all explanation of what Fallout is or should be. It is not. Anyone who thinks so is... perhaps a millenia behind in art criticism. It's the intentional fallacy - the idea that the author or artist's original plan or statement of intent defines the piece. It does not. They're separate.
The last time I brought this up that's all I said, and I was told I was going for the "it's all relative" (everything's subjective) route. I'm not. There are only two groups of critics who would do that. The first is the postmodern deconstructionist bunch, and I'm not going to get into that because the entire premise is that there is no point or meaning in anything, which uh... is not what I'm aiming for here, and is not that largely accepted among rational folk anyway. The other is reader-response criticism, the strong version of which basically says "what's important is whatever you take from it, regardless of anything else." That's not what I'm talking about either because it's also not that largely accepted among rational folk - just because all some jackass got from The Great Gatsby was that women can't drive doesn't mean that's what it is - even if that's what most people do without thinking about it. So I'm going to give a history lesson here so we're absolutely clear on what I'm talking about.
Look up the phrase "intentional fallacy" anywhere and you'll see what I'm talking about. It's from the New Critics (actually a pretty old movement at this point; "New" is just part of the name). They came up with the idea that what the author says doesn't mean squat when it comes to analysis of a piece. Analyze the piece time and time again, picking up on intricacies as you go, to determine the meaning. Not "take whatever you want from it"; "amass evidence to make your case." There's a lot they did, but the idea behind the intentional fallacy is that just because the author tells you that something means "X" doesn't mean the piece was designed in a way that made in plausible for something to mean "X." Take Kate Chopin's pro-feminist The Awakening. After tremendous criticism from the press, she released a statement that effectively said "everything feminist in there was purely accidental, I assure you." It was actually sarcastic, of course, but that was her published statement of intent, and the intentional fallacy dictates that the book's themes are strictly not to be interpreted as pro-women's rights, when anyone reading the book and actually getting evidence from the text would see it was obviously an intensely feminist piece from start to end.
But then, that's a case where we know that wasn't her intent, right? Well, there's the reductio ad absurdum for you. If Fitzgerald said "The Great Gatsby" was about "squirrels, and lots of 'em," and then continued to say that for the rest of his life, deadpan serious, to the point where it became clear he was actually insane, it wouldn't mean the book was about squirrels just because he said it. His statement of intent means nothing. The intentional fallacy also has the nasty side effect of disregarding works if we do not have the original plans and we do not have a statement of intent. If the only thing that matters is what the piece was supposed to be, and we don't know what it was supposed to be, the only purely logical conclusion is that nothing we know about the piece matters. So the New Critics say "fuck the author, fuck what he wants, what matters about the piece is what the evidence points to." And if the evidence doesn't point towards what the creator intended, that means nothing more than that the creator was deficient in some manner or another.
Of course, the New Critics were something of extremists. More recent movements, like the New Historicists, think that the context of the piece, including what the author intended, should be considered where appropriate. Not as some ultimate definition, but as a decent starting point - if the context, plans, and/or statement of intent are reasonable and relevant, they should be considered and even given a little bit of extra weight.
But the idea that "whatever the author says is what the piece means" is long, long dead. Even the original historicists didn't judge art this way - they judged it as nothing more than a product of its time. I am not aware of any artistic movement - current, recent, or archaic - that thinks the author's intent is the only important or even most important thing to consider.
Now, I'm not going to make an argument for the setting of Fallout being more important. Not now. Because there is a high probability - not based on you guys in particular, but people in general - that at least some people are going to think that either games aren't art, or take an anti-intellectual stance and dismiss all art critics as pompous (this works best if the art critics are French). But the idea that the gameplay was as integral to the game as the story because the original design outlined both is absurd. Again, the gameplay can be as integral to the game as the story. I'm not making an argument about that at the moment. But the "But the original design!" argument is full of holes and would never be accepted anywhere outside these forums by anyone with even a passing interest in analysis, criticism, or discussion of art, as art. If your opinion is still that the author's intent is the most important thing, you can of course keep saying it, because it's your opinion. But it's a completely irrational and groundless opinion. Whether or not that bothers you is, well, up to you.
I know how fusion and fission work. You're right; it is completely wrong. Like how in Spiderman 2 one of the main things was that the fusion reaction might go out of control, when in real life that is exactly what a fusion reaction will not do (also, "putting out" nuclear fusion with water - yeah, uh huh).
Bethesda...
