Gamer.no previews Fallout 3

Brother None

Brother None

This ghoul has seen it all
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Norwegian gaming site Gamer.no previewed Fallout 3 and didn't like it much at all. Iconoclast provides these tidbits:<blockquote>- Hines' enthusiasm equals that of a wooden log
- The different dialogue options have no effect whatsoever on character development (it's purely for show)
- Overall the visuals are great, but in-game menus and interface (VATS, presumably) looks awful and irritating
- Describes the experience as "consolified"</blockquote>Since that's a bit succinct, ericjones translated in more detail.<blockquote>It's hard to believe that the guy who showed us the game, Pete Hines, was from Bethesda's PR department. Firstly, he didn't seem particularly enthusiastic. Secondly, he had chosen to put emphasis on, in my opinion, irrelevant details.

Ok, it might be a bit funny that you as a newborn can cry at the touch of a button. It's also somewhat charming that you say "dadda" by pressing the same button when you reach three years of age, but what the hell does that have to do with good role-playing design? If this is the way the designers think, then we've come off on the wrong foot from the very beginning, and I can swear that the developer of Fallout 1 and 2, Interplay, will be turning in their grave (or "in their Linux partition", as the preview says).
(...)
At this point, the game is introducing us to dialogue. Like many other RPGs, Fallout 3 uses a dialogue-tree that lets you choose how to respond to other characters in the game. You can always choose between several alternatives, and it's usually fairly easy to see which alternative will evoke what response. If we are to believe Hines, the dialogue-trees are of no significance for the development of the character during the game. The different possibilities for dialogue are there solely to let the gamer play the way he wants and provoke reactions from other characters.
(...)
The graphic user interface also seems like it's been subject to prolonged radiocative exposure. When it comes to the design, there is a huge gap in the level of artistry between the beautiful, detailed areas and the way the game gives you information on-screen.
Ugly shades of green, boring menues and counters(? - I believe this means the HUD) were some of the most annoying aspects of the game. This is 2008. I expect that a game that is supposed to transmit a lot of information by text and counters, will do its best to make this part of the game look as good as possible. If you're making the player passive, it's necessary to make his time as interesting and functional as possible.
(...)
Who is this game for? That was the question that occured to me after Hines' presentation. It doesn't seem to be a game for those who traditionally have played Fallout. By that I mean hardcore PC-gamers. Fallout 3 is significantly "consolified". It's very well possible that this makes Bethesda able to reach a larger audience, but they should be careful not to marginilize (or overlook) those who loved the first two games.
(...)
Fallout 3 seems to be a nice RPG from the developer who gave us Oblivion, but I get the feeling that the game has very little in common with its predecessors except for the name. It seems to be an RPG that's typical for its time. Its getting closer to being a shooter, and it seems to want to help the player out a little too often.</blockquote>Link: Fallout 3 preview on Gamer.no.
 
The source material wasn't the best. Nonetheless, here's a quick and rough translation:

"It's hard to believe that the guy who showed us the game, Pete Hines, was from Bethesda's PR department. Firstly, he didn't seem particularly enthusiastic. Secondly, he had chosen to put emphasis on, in my opinion, irrelevant details.

Ok, it might be a bit funny that you as a newborn can cry at the touch of a button. It's also somewhat charming that you say "dadda" by pressing the same button when you reach three years of age, but what the hell does that have to do with good role-playing design? If this is the way the designers think, then we've come off on the wrong foot from the very beginning, and I can swear that the developer of Fallout 1 and 2, Interplay, will be turning in their grave (or "in their Linux partition", as the preview says)."

(...)

"At this point, the game is introducing us to dialogue. Like many other RPGs, Fallout 3 uses a dialogue-tree that lets you choose how to respond to other characters in the game. You can always choose between several alternatives, and it's usually fairly easy to see which alternative will evoke what response. If we are to believe Hines, the dialogue-trees is of no significance for the development of the character during the game. The different possibilities for dialogue are there solely to let the gamer play the way he wants and provoke reactions from other characters."

(...)

"The graphic user interface also seems like it's been subject to prolonged radiocative exposure. When it comes to the design, there is a huge gap in the level of artistry between the beautiful, detailed areas and the way the game gives you information on-screen.
Ugly shades of green, boring menues and counters(? - I believe this means the HUD) were some of the most annoying aspects of the game. This is 2008. I expect that a game that is supposed to transmit a lot of information by text and counters, will do its best to make this part of the game look as good as possible. If you're making the player passive, it's necessary to make his time as interesting and functional as possible."

(...)

"Who is this game for? That was the question that occured to me after Hines' presentation. It doesn't seem to be a game for those who traditionally have played Fallout. By that I mean hardcore PC-gamers. Fallout 3 is significantly "consolified". It's very well possible that this makes Bethesda able to reach a larger audience, but they should be careful not to marginilize (or overlook) those who loved the first two games."

(...)
"Fallout 3 seems to be a nice RPG from the developer who gave us Oblivion, but I get the feeling that the game has very little in common with its predecessors except for the name. It seems to be an RPG that's typical for its time. Its getting closer to being a shooter, and it seems to want to help the player out a little too often."
 
The point about dialogue trees seems to be the same Pete made a while ago, that dialogue options will not directly influence your actual character development.
 
Sander said:
The point about dialogue trees seems to be the same Pete made a while ago, that dialogue options will not directly influence your actual character development.
Click to expand...

Same thing as Fallout 1/2, then?
 
Brother None said:
Sander said:
The point about dialogue trees seems to be the same Pete made a while ago, that dialogue options will not directly influence your actual character development.
Click to expand...

Same thing as Fallout 1/2, then?
Click to expand...

Well there were few times when you could increase some of your skills through dialoque (like Little Jesus teaching you to fight better with melee weapons).
 
The different possibilities for dialogue are there solely to let the gamer play the way he wants and provoke reactions from other characters.
Click to expand...

Choice and Consequence! We have evidence! Fallout 3 is going to be the best!

...
 
No problem whatsoever! Feels good to be able give something back to the hard working community here for once.

Anyway, the Norwegian in the article isn't particularly good, so it's kinda hard to see where he's going with the dialogue-tree thing. I don't think it's straight-out criticism. I believe he mentions it because Hines seems to explicitly have said it during his presentation.

Reading between the lines, it might seem as if the previewer would have liked it if the dialogue-trees would aid in player development, but the way it stands at the moment, the comment is neutral.

Also worthy of mentioning:

In addition to the visuals (except for the menu and HUD) being great, the previewer also praises the music and atmosphere.

(By the way, could you please edit "the dialogue-trees is of no significance" into "the dialogue-trees ARE of no significance"? :p Thanks)

edit: Reading in the forums at gamer.no, I believe that the previewer has misunderstood the concept of the dialogues. He believes that the different dialogue options do not render different concequences.
 
Interesting how the farther east you go, the more independant the thoughts of the preview are. Can't wait to read some Russian previews. As a consumer, I rather the more skeptical preview then the typical cheerleading/infomercial style.
 
Ugly shades of green, boring menues and counters(? - I believe this means the HUD) were some of the most annoying aspects of the game. This is 2008. I expect that a game that is supposed to transmit a lot of information by text and counters, will do its best to make this part of the game look as good as possible.
Click to expand...

This makes me doubt the previewer's understanding of stylistic influences behind Fallout UI. and makes me think that maybe in fact Bethesda got the UI right.
 
ericjones said:
Anyway, the Norwegian in the article isn't particularly good, so it's kinda hard to see where he's going with the dialogue-tree thing. I don't think it's straight-out criticism. I believe he mentions it because Hines seems to explicitly have said it during his presentation.
edit: Reading in the forums at gamer.no, I believe that the previewer has misunderstood the concept of the dialogues. He believes that the different dialogue options do not render different concequences.
Click to expand...

It's not easy to know exactly what he means (especially since my Norwegian is less than great), but I agree with you that he seems to have misunderstood it. I sure hope so, at least, as it would be even more terrible if he was actually right and dialogue had no real meaning whatsoever :roll:


shihonage said:
This makes me doubt the previewer's understanding of stylistic influences behind Fallout UI. and makes me think that maybe in fact Bethesda got the UI right.
Click to expand...

Judging by what he said in the forum comments I think what he meant was that they could have made the interface more functional while still maintaining the Fallout art style. He did not mean that they should be making the menus look "as though they had been taken from a random space marine-game" (basically his phrasing of it). Perhaps his comment was in someway connected to the "consollified" feeling he mentioned?
 
H.A.D.E.S. said:
Brother None said:
Sander said:
The point about dialogue trees seems to be the same Pete made a while ago, that dialogue options will not directly influence your actual character development.
Click to expand...

Same thing as Fallout 1/2, then?
Click to expand...

Well there were few times when you could increase some of your skills through dialoque (like Little Jesus teaching you to fight better with melee weapons).
Click to expand...

I wholly embroiled in confusion.
I think... hold on here, I think they may just be saying something to - say something.

Yes, I think that paragraph made absolutely no sense (perhaps in Norwegian) and he knows it.
 
Still confused? Perhaps a complete translation will help:

PARIS

The clock is ticking towards 12 o'clock on a hot spring day in Paris. The normal tourists that pace the streets of Louvre in the thousands a day stream by in big heards accompanied by all the worlds languages. Most of them easily navigates past the conventioncenter where Ubidays recides, as if the writing "Mona Lisa" with an arrow pointing in the opposite direction has a bigger impact. Of the few who manages to end up in the wrong place, there's still fewer who ends up where I'm waiting to enter. Bethesta is actually going to show Fallout 3 behind closed doors, and I'm going to have a look for my first time.

The dream of being presented a grandscale presentation by the developers is shattered like a porcelen vase when reality sets into my head. In a room the size of a standard broom cupboard in Louvre, 10-12 sweaty european journalists tries to sqeeze together. The air is so oxygen poor that just lifting a chair reminds me of a streinious game of loop football in Bolivia. A somewhat sweaty PR-guy introduces himself, and gives his assistant the command to turn off the lights. The room falls dark, and my mind travels back in time to my earlier days of overcrowded military tents - it's really uncomfortable now.

DEPRESSING

Uncomfortable is in many ways the common denominator of the game´s intro. In the intro movie, we get to see a post-apocolyptic cityscape that's been ravaged by human folly, in their never ending quest for power. When you add the immersive music the whole thing comes through as borderline artistic, and the atmosphere sucks you right into the game´s world.

In 2077, mankinds destructiveness reached a climax. It wasn't the end of the world as was predicted, but instead a bloody chapter in mankinds history. Nuclear war had made the earth´s surface more or less inhospitable. Those still alive survived for many years in radiationsafe nuclear bunkers. Your journey starts in vault 101, a vault where you get born and die. Nobody enters and nobody leaves. Like you probably can guess, this has to an end sometime.

The game starts with a trainingpart that takes you through your own childhood. You have to do everything from learning how to walk, decide on basic skills and who and what you want to be. This seems to be well sown into the experience, wher you go through various scenes where you define yourself. Fallout 3 doesn't use the classic roleplay interface, something that assures a more participating start to the game - despite the slow pace.

UNINSPIRING

You would think that the man who presented the game, Pete Hines, was from Bethesta´s marketing department. One thing was that he seemed as inspired as a wooden stub. Another thing was the things he chose to focus on. When he showed the earlier stages, he chose to focus on how you can press a button to cry as a newly born. It's also somewhat charming to say "dadda" by pressing the same button when your 3 years old, but what the heck has that got to do with good roleplaydesign? I cant imagine that the designers think this way, because that way we're on the wrong foot from the start, and I can swear that the developer of Fallout 1 and 2 is turning in his Linux-partition.

Despite the slow pace of the childhood story you're playing in the early phase of the game, it introduces a new player well to the concept. You're introduced to new things gradually, and the sequence where you're 10 years old and recieves your own Pip-Boy 3000, a personal computer attached to your arm, is in many ways the first thing that clarifies what gendre we're in.

At this point in time the game introduces you to dialogue. Fallout 3 has like many other a dialoguetree that lets you choose how to respond to what other players are saying to you. You can the whole time choose between multiple alternatives, and it's clear what the intention of most of them are. If we are to believe Hines, the dialoguetrees have no effect on your character developement in the game. The different dialogue trees is just to allow the player to play it like he wants and provoce reactions from other characters.

A BIG FUSS FOR NOTHING?

Again, I'm a little puzzled. A dialoguetree for appearance sakes? Is the manuscript so funny that they don't need to connect concequences for your actions to your choices? Is this entire function just superficial from the start?

What happens later is training in weapons and how combat works in the game. You have to take the test G.O.A.T. (Generalizied Occupation Attitude Test), whitch allows you to choose the three abilities you want to be best at from the start, and as you advance in levels, you get to fill more into these. The last thing that happens in this trainingmode is that as a 19-year old find out that your father has left the vault, something nobody has done in 200 years, and with that, your adventure has fully started.

Fallout 3 kan be played in first- and third person, and at a glance the combatsystem resembles the modern sort like the one that Mass Effect uses. It remids you strongly of traditional shooter gaming mechanics, but Fallout has a certain depth to it. Those that remember Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, will remember a system where you could freeze the fights and decide what should happen, and the game relates strongly to this.

You can freeze the fighting all the time, and the V.A.T.S-system on the Pip-boy gives you information on how probable you are to hit certain parts of the enemy. You can also "program" where you want your salvoes to go, and this uses action points. This seems like a wonderfull piece of design, where you have a certain amount of points from a regenerating pool to spend from, to hinder you from staying in the freeze mode all the time.

HIDEOUSLY PRETTY

The game looks very pretty, and as soon as you exit vault 101, a big and detailed world faces you. The enemies, whether they belong to one of the fighting fractions or just some monsters that's been exposed to radiation for a longer period of time, are all repulsing, so that it almost feels like you've been in a vault your whole life.

What's obviously also been exposed to radiation for a long period of time, is the visual interface. It's a big gap between the artistic quality of the visual design - the magnificent and detailed areas - and the way the game gives you information. A sickening green, boring menues and gauges was something that irritated me the most when I got to see the game. We're in 2008. I expect a game that relay a lot of information to wrap this in as solidly as possible. If you passify the player, you have to make sure that his time is made as interesting and functional as possible.

It's going to be 20 levels in the game, and for a game with a main storyline of about 25 hours worth of playtime, that may be enough as you will be gradually adding more points to your different skills. This system seems well thought out. You should feel that you gradually become better, and there's a lot you do and modify, both in terms of skills, weapons and the like.

Who is this game for? This is a question that popped into my head after Hines was finished with his presentation. It doesn't seem to be a game for those who traditionally have played Fallout, as I imagine most of them are pretty hardcore PC-players. Fallout 3 is substantially more "consolified". It's a distinct possiblity that Bethesta manages to capture a wider group of gamers with this, but they should be carefull not to marginalize those who loved the previous games.

CONCLUSION

Fallout 3 looks to become a good role playing game from the developers that gave us Oblivion, but I'm getting the feeling that this game has very little to do with the 2 prequels if you discount the name. It seems like a standard rpg that's typical in these days. It's getting closer to the shooter gendre, and seems to be a little "over the top" helpful to the player.

I'm not going to draw a caricature of Muhammed on the wall here, because instantly when I see the concepth that Bethesta is working on, I also see that these people know their work. I just hope they can translate all that creativity into good gaming design, because I look forward to seing more.
 
Cimmerian Nights said:
Interesting how the farther east you go, the more independant the thoughts of the preview are. Can't wait to read some Russian previews. As a consumer, I rather the more skeptical preview then the typical cheerleading/infomercial style.
Click to expand...

That's the truth. It's we pitty that there are no Japanese fallout players. Seeing them KILL FALLOUT 3 WITH FIRE would hirilarious. We have Gunner of Shi, though. He's from China, so he would flame Fallout 3 to death.
 
Cimmerian Nights said:
Interesting how the farther east you go, the more independant the thoughts of the preview are.
Click to expand...

I don't know, Cimms. Poland is further East, and so far, F3's been recieving the usual brown-nosing from our country's gaming media.

Comments, however... aren't as optimistic.
 
Anything beats the out and out sycophantery from the US/UK previews.

I've felt less intellectually pissed on watching bad pro-wrestling than reading some of those things.

And I for one don't beleive that Hines is running out of gas. I give the man credit where it's due. He's the Energizer Bunny of disingenuous blather.
 
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