Gripes about the writing

[Fynn]

Wow, I know the scene you're talking about with the stimpacks, but I definitely had more options than that. I could give him Buffout, but it had some connotation of hurting his heart even more, give him a stimpack to keep him going, and then those options you had. Must be a bug (imagine that!).

As for the second pic, that's exactly what I was trying to get at in my post. Something like that is blatantly following the good/neutral/evil classification of dialogue.

 

[Alphadrop]

I think you have to have 10 stimpacks for the dialogue to show up.

 

[Public]

As for the second pic, that's exactly what I was trying to get at in my post. Something like that is blatantly following the good/neutral/evil classification of dialogue.

IMO it's good/evil/more evil classification of dialogue

I think you have to have 10 stimpacks for the dialogue to show up.

WTF? He has 1000 HP or something?

 

[Ulysses]

I think she takes 5 to heal the guy with a heart condition. Strange, you'd think a massive stimulant might be bad for one's heart. Anyway. I agree with the rather uncreative options for dialogue. The Good/Bad/Neutral options would be ok, if they weren't so stupid. I can be evil without sounding like some 13 year old punk ("Go f**k yourself", etc.) I laughed at the options I had with Paladin Cross

-- Edit - just for clarity..

I laughed at how ridiculous the options were, not that they were funny in a good way. The most "evil" thing I can say about my father is "He died like a selfish asshole", bleh

 

[Public]

I can be evil without sounding like some 13 year old punk ("Go f**k yourself", etc.) I laughed at the options I had with Paladin Cross

Proof for Bethesda's immature humour.

I think she takes 5 to heal the guy with a heart condition.

The doctor skill (and medics from previous Fallouts) would do the trick here.

 

[KillerBee256]

for starters the lines with stat checks are uniformly terrible

....


an [Intelligence] line is supposed to give you something insightful to say. these lines are simply restating the obvious, and dumbing down the rest of the choices to make it seem smart by contrast

so true. I almost felt insulted by that crap ;/


the dialogue options are pretty low overall

the quests are not so well made -- in the majority of the quests there is no conflict, no side to pick, no consequences. I dont understand how Beth writers could miss all that

Sometimes you don't find out the full effect of what you have done untell latter, ie Tinpenny tower.

[spoiler:188bad8322]I got the ghouls in by convening every one that they were okay, only to come back latter to find out Roger killed everyone after he got in, I felt horrable.[/spoiler:188bad8322]

 

[Ausdoerrt]

Watch some anime and play some JRPGS....it makes all this look like fucking shakespeare.

Yah, hearing it from someone who has no frigging idea what he's talking about. A bunch of 'tarded American movies could make ANYTHING seem like Shakespeare (Napoleon Dynamite, Anchorman, do I need to list more?). If you never played Seinarukana or Utawarerumono, you have no right to say JRPG writing is uniformely bad. But I'd better not go off-topic too much.

FO3: dialogues felt nothing like what someone would say in a real situation in 99% of the time. No item or NPC descriptions = bad. But my primarily issue is the dialogue because it seems like the commies invented bombs that make people's IQ fall drastically.

 

[SoberCounsel]

Sometimes you don't find out the full effect of what you have done untell latter, ie Tinpenny tower.

[spoiler:88be51d46a]I got the ghouls in by convening every one that they were okay, only to come back latter to find out Roger killed everyone after he got in, I felt horrable.[/spoiler:88be51d46a]

This didn't happen to me, the only person he killed was Tenpenny.. this was probably because I convinced a couple of the others to leave on their own.

Anyway. Yadda yaddaihatetheshortandboringdialoguechoicestoo ad nausium.

What really got me was that I could GO BACK and try out the different dialogue choices if I didn't like what I heard. Now this isn't a case of saving and re-loading, it's honest to fuck choosing the "evil" response.. not liking it, and being able to choose the "good" response 5 seconds later, no harm done.

The only time so far that has even come *close* to resembling an adequate Fallout-like situational response, was when a Ghoul (name eludes me) was asking me to kill 4 people on the pretence that they were Ghoul haters. With no establishing pretence I discovered that I could collect keys and go get the Classic T-51b Power Armor in a locked military compound. (apparently I was supposed to talk to someone else to find out about this, but once again Bethesda fuck up the 'quest order' instances)
The point this all brings me to, is that I could have confronted the Ghoul and given him a stern warning (very boring choices yet again) and he would suddenly attack me (along with everyone else in the room.. wtf?)
This reminds me of the Raiders Camp in Fallout where I could insult one guy until he decided to attack me, and suddenly the ENTIRE camp would be after me.
But i'm forced to distinguish between the two, because only in Fallout does it make sense! The Raiders hate outsiders, and kill on a whim, so why the hell not go nuts and attack me. But an entirely friendly town of peaceful ghouls going feral and blitzkrieging me makes no freaking sense.

More Bethesda AI nonsense I guess.

 

[Ihniwid]

Also, exposition is not a direct necessity in a work, it is rather a way to explore the depths or inner workings of whatever it is you are dealing with. This is all very much a personal issue Eyenixon. It doesn't mean the story or game is broken.

I personally liked the fact that everyone you talk to isn't dumping their entire life story at you every step of the way. Mass Effect, now that game had exposition. I almost took a revolver to my face it had so much exposition.

Personal? That is one of the most flabbergastingly inappropriate comments I have ever heard, exposition is not a personal issue, it separates a subpar experience with two dimensional characters from one with fully fleshed out events and personalities.

You're telling me that because Fallout 3 decides not to elaborate on the vast majority of its plot and character background thus destroying any possibility of the game developing deep and relevant writing is a personal issue?
No, it is not a personal issue, exposition provides depth to dialog, and Fallout 3 lacks it, it's directly tied to the issue of poor writing in the game, and since most of the writing applies to dialog it's the primary issue with Fallout 3's writing.

There isn't any exposition, little of the story is fleshed out, few of the characters are given elaborate explanatory dialog and as a direct result you're left with a shallow decrepit example of dialog in a videogame.

Please take a look at Planescape: Torment, I may despise everything to do with that title's gameplay, but there is no doubt it provided the necessary exposition with each character - and without having them "dumping their entire life story at you" - in order for the writing to be on par with a quality book.
It's not that difficult to do, and it's essentially required unless you're attempting to make a piece of surrealism, which Bethesda certainly wasn't.

And just because Mass Effect had a lot of it (which it really didn't) that doesn't mean it was done well, however it was done better than it was in Fallout 3.

Ok, I will check out Planescape Torment only if it can run on a 4 year old machine. I play on a console since I don't have a decent rig.

However, I still disagree with what you are trying to tell me. Exposition, which is one of the very first things any writer should look into, is a personal choice to a degree. The writer(s) must decide on how much they want to directly affect the reader/player with all the inner workings of a story. Now am I saying no or little exposition in a work is a good thing, no, but by no means is a lot of exposition going to create soem masterwork at the same time.

I'm arguing that there IS exposition in Fallout 3 but they do not make you sit through it all, it is there to be FOUND rather than spoon fed like in many other games. I personally agree with their choice to do so. It allows the player to either forgo any real knowledge of the basis of the plot or consume as much as they can find. That's all...

And yes, Mass Effect for me had faaar too much exposition. A guy crossing the street that I'd bump into would tell me everything from his sex life to why the universe is in peril. I don't need nor do I have the time to care.

This has everythign to do with the TIME investment.

 

[Public]

Ok, I will check out Planescape Torment only if it can run on a 4 year old machine. I play on a console since I don't have a decent rig.

The game was released somewhere when FO1 and FO2 were released.

 

[Ausdoerrt]

Yup, after FO2, I believe 1999 or 2000. So you might have trouble only if you have a new nVidia gfx card.

 

[Sander]

Ok, I will check out Planescape Torment only if it can run on a 4 year old machine. I play on a console since I don't have a decent rig.

However, I still disagree with what you are trying to tell me. Exposition, which is one of the very first things any writer should look into, is a personal choice to a degree. The writer(s) must decide on how much they want to directly affect the reader/player with all the inner workings of a story. Now am I saying no or little exposition in a work is a good thing, no, but by no means is a lot of exposition going to create soem masterwork at the same time.

I'm arguing that there IS exposition in Fallout 3 but they do not make you sit through it all, it is there to be FOUND rather than spoon fed like in many other games. I personally agree with their choice to do so. It allows the player to either forgo any real knowledge of the basis of the plot or consume as much as they can find. That's all...

Giving the player room to find out what he needs to is one thing, making every dialogue a one-sentence deal is another.

Throughout dialogue I had the idea that Bethesda was trying to shoot me through the dialogue as quickly as possible. It took a whole of two sentences to [spoiler:d2becaf595]convince Eden to commit suicide[/spoiler:d2becaf595], whereas that surely should've been fleshed out a lot more.
ANd that's just one example.

 

[Roflcore]

Someone should change those lines so that instead of [intelligence] they would be [Captain Obvious].

Can somebody mod/photoshop this?
did somebody mention repetition? i hate mira.

 

[Ihniwid]

Ok, I will check out Planescape Torment only if it can run on a 4 year old machine. I play on a console since I don't have a decent rig.

However, I still disagree with what you are trying to tell me. Exposition, which is one of the very first things any writer should look into, is a personal choice to a degree. The writer(s) must decide on how much they want to directly affect the reader/player with all the inner workings of a story. Now am I saying no or little exposition in a work is a good thing, no, but by no means is a lot of exposition going to create soem masterwork at the same time.

I'm arguing that there IS exposition in Fallout 3 but they do not make you sit through it all, it is there to be FOUND rather than spoon fed like in many other games. I personally agree with their choice to do so. It allows the player to either forgo any real knowledge of the basis of the plot or consume as much as they can find. That's all...

Giving the player room to find out what he needs to is one thing, making every dialogue a one-sentence deal is another.

Throughout dialogue I had the idea that Bethesda was trying to shoot me through the dialogue as quickly as possible. It took a whole of two sentences to [spoiler:63b8d94599]convince Eden to commit suicide[/spoiler:63b8d94599], whereas that surely should've been fleshed out a lot more.
ANd that's just one example.

Yeah that is just uninspired, lazy writing. A means to further plot while sacrificing ... everything really...

TES did that a lot too. They seem to stumble when it comes to plot developing dialogue often...

 

[sentorio]

As for the second pic, that's exactly what I was trying to get at in my post. Something like that is blatantly following the good/neutral/evil classification of dialogue.

That's the main problem about the whole Fallout 3, I remember that playing Baldur's Gate was a joke because all dialogs were like this. Plus all writing suffers from lack of realism and humor (I'm not looking for humor, do not care too much but for the sake of Fallout I expect some good dark humor from a game claims the name Fallout 3).

IMHO Mass Effect did this quite nicely, I think Mass Effect was a master piece in games history when it comes to combining great graphics, a complete universe, story, writing, voice acting into a game. If you ignore some stupid side-quests all over story and the quests was also quite deep and great. Heavily scripted and lack of some open world opportunities, but you actually feel like you are Commander Shepard.

 

[Ihniwid]

As for the second pic, that's exactly what I was trying to get at in my post. Something like that is blatantly following the good/neutral/evil classification of dialogue.

That's the main problem about the whole Fallout 3, I remember that playing Baldur's Gate was a joke because all dialogs were like this. Plus all writing suffers from lack of realism and humor (I'm not looking for humor, do not care too much but for the sake of Fallout I expect some good dark humor from a game claims the name Fallout 3).

IMHO Mass Effect did this quite nicely, I think Mass Effect was a master piece in games history when it comes to combining great graphics, a complete universe, story, writing, voice acting into a game. If you ignore some stupid side-quests all over story and the quests was also quite deep and great. Heavily scripted and lack of some open world opportunities, but you actually feel like you are Commander Shepard.

Since you used "IMHO" I won't go all nerdy about Mass Effect... But IMHO Mass Effect is not the master piece of anything...

Honestly, it all comes down to TASTE rather than ARTISTRY. However it seems as if Fallout 3 would be one end of the spectrum, using mechanical one-liners to convey plot development. Thusly Mass Effect would be the other end of the spectrum, where they convey far too much dialogue. Some conversations, if you didnt skip them or halt the voice acting to read it yourself, would go on for literally 15 minutes. Thats just silly.

No, there is no master piece when it comes to dialogue, (I'll get on planscape torment though, to see, lol. ). Which is why I believe all this complaining about the writing is rediculous.

Oh and sentorio, a master piece cannot be a master piece if you are ignoring aspects. The parts must completely compliment the whole.... ... IMHO....

 

[Eternal]

I'm still deeply into FO3 so I can't convey most of my opinions but here is my generalized feelings.

I feel that the responses in the dialog trees don't go deep enough or are varied enough, however the expositions, while not great are also not bad. If you consider the fact you are an outsider in a barren wasteland full of people trying to kill you and others, people you come across would be suspicious of you. Would you delve deep into your troubled past life to a total stranger at the bus stop?

Now this isn't to say that the writing is good, it is very much flawed. The exchange with Leo Stahl to get him off drugs consisted basically of 'don't do drugs' 'well why not?' 'because it makes your family sad pandas' the end. Clearly they don't delve deep enough into the trees which end up feeling less like conversations and more like quips.

On the flip side though, I feel they did an above average, while sub-FO1-2, job on the writing of things you find in computers.

 

[Mapex]

I like how they attempted "dark humor" with Moira Brown being all happy and energetic when talking about otherwise gloomy subjects.

That's not dark. That's bipolar disorder.

I also loved how whenever an NPC said "fuck" it came out more like "hhffffffhhhhuuckk", the h's being aspirated sounds.

The NPC dialogue overall was pretty decent, I feel. However, it was molded around the player's dialogue options, which were piss poor, stereotypical GNE type of choices, and so the NPC dialogue suffers where it shouldn't. Some characters were just poorly thought out, period.

I was hoping for more character choices where good would be like "good intention, but bad or different results" and evil would be more than "I have a knife, I stab you now".

 

[Ausdoerrt]

Oh cmon, let's not talk about dialogue being a representation of good/neutral/evil, most RPGs with dialogue systems are like that, even PS:T. It's a general syndrome. A totally different thing is to have a reasonable level of writing which would occasionally challenge you to figur out which is which.

The least Beth could do about the dialogue is voice the main character and have short-line representation of choices, but a long line for the character to speak.

 

[Ihniwid]

Oh cmon, let's not talk about dialogue being a representation of good/neutral/evil, most RPGs with dialogue systems are like that, even PS:T. It's a general syndrome. A totally different thing is to have a reasonable level of writing which would occasionally challenge you to figur out which is which.

The least Beth could do about the dialogue is voice the main character and have short-line representation of choices, but a long line for the character to speak.

Yeah more of a "grey" area would be really cool. This idea of "making your own experience" is still in its infancy. One day it'll be truly unique. Which is why I do not understand all of this hubub about it being "unrealistic" and difficult to stomach...