Re: Just finished...What a waste of time.
Yeah its my first post but I guess its a good one to start on. I am going to play devil's advocate for the devlopers here for a minute, just for perspective. Keep in mind here it is all in good fun and I'm not trying to flame anyone.
While I don't agree with every point that will be made here they are still valid in my opinion. That being said, I do think you were a little harsh.. considering the game is pretty special in its own right; and I think you overlooked some things in your criticism. Though you made some really good points, I don't think you put enough time into the game to get out of it what you were expecting.
3rdRate said:
This game has zero plot, zero story, zero substance. It's not like an open-ended game that seems to have an infinite number of possibilities - this game has nothing close to that. What is the story again? Something about purifying water? It's about as interesting as Indiana Jones final revelation: "The treasure is knowledge! Knowledge is the treasure!" And an evil computer that's taken over an army to eradicate the wastes? And put the trusty ol' recycled FEV in the water supply? That's it? After all this, just a recycled F2 plot? I just careened through the end of the game post-Vault 87 in about 30 minutes or so - what a miserable act 3.
The story is more of a mash-up of fo1 and fo2 stories. It has elements of both and elements of originality, but all all three pertain to the same central ideas. It is supposed to be like that. It is following the same structure of the first two games. In terms of open-endedness, it is as open as you choose to make it. Also, "Act 3" is what you make it. That is the point where developers are giving you a clear opportunity to explore before finishing up the main quest.
As a shooter, this fails. There are a billion better dumb mindless shooters out there whose game mechanics, graphics engines, and AI are far superior to this. So obviously I'm not playing this for a shooter. There must be something more to it, perhaps some level of intelligence?
Well.. yeah. Thats why its an RPG and has VATS. What game has done something cooler or better than VATS for RPG-shooter combat?
Complaints:
1) No towns larger than the starter, Megaton (don't even try to suggest DC is a town) (Things that make you go "huh?" #1)
There was a nuclear apocalypse. You think there would be more than a handful of towns with large numbers of people? Also, Rivet City is bigger.
2) Why do I have to find an unowned bed to keep going back to sleep? Why can't I just [censored] sleep anywhere? And why, when I "wait," doesn't it count?? (Things that make you go "huh?" #2)
So you can't just fully heal everywhere in the game. There is a bed in or somewhere near every location in the game. What would be the point of stimpaks or food if you could sleep in every bed in the game?
3) If this is so open-ended, why can't I kill everyone I feel like? For example, in real life, when that douchey little kid tells me I can't come into the Lamp Light caves, I'd blow his f8cking head off.
Well.. while I do agree with this point I will tell you why you can't kill kids in Fallout 3. In Fallout 2, you could kill kids in the game. It caused people to react negatively to you and made it so some people wouldn't join your party. But.. it screwed up international releases because they just completely removed kids from the game and it caused a lot of bugs. Also because it is considered more fucked up to kill kids than it is to have slaves and full-on nuclear apocalypses. The MPAA is a strange beast.
4) Why do quests seems SO unfulfilling?
Most quests are very fullfilling, clever, well written, and make perfect sense in their conclusions and dialogue. You named one of the few quests that has a strange and "what the..." ending.
5) Religious fanatacism that's NEVER fleshed out. Those worshipers only exist in Megaton? Wow, creative. Just like the cults in F1 and F2 that presented a major adversary in addition to the main enemies.
They only exist in megaton because thats the only place theres a Nuclear Bomb in the middle of the city. How would peaceful religious fanatics play a major adversary? Are they going to systematically eliminate the enclave and brainwash the wastes using white noise transmitted over GNR?
6) Major, major PC version problems. The dumb game crashes all the time.
Get a better PC. It freezes on Xbox 360, though, and that sucks.
7) Was anyone really surprised when the president turned out to be a computer? I was waiting for my character to wake up and go "What a horrible nightmare!"
No I wasn't surprised. I don't think you were supposed to be. It sure does seem to make sense to me in context of the story.
8) Horrible horrible AI. My favorite experience was when the ultimate major huge enormous Super Mutant outside the radio station couldn't figure out how to get me as I shot him from under the platform, and just kept running at me like a runner on a treadmill. His expression was almost one of anguish at having to follow the terrible coding.
The AI fits the game. I don't ever remember a pulling point for the game being that it had amazing life-like AI that would revoltionize RPG AI. I would say the AI is damn good for being a RPG. Sure, it is dumb AI, but it is still a "fun" AI to play with. It isn't like they stand still in one place shooting at you like in many many games.
9) A main plot that is thoroughly 1st draft. You're game is only as interesting as your antagonist. I have no idea why the Enclave is bad. Oh, sure, if I played F2, I'm fully aware how horrible and xenophobic they are, but in this game, you're basically asked to assume that the guys kidnapping you are bad. It's sort of like in Tomb Raider the movie, when the Illuminati want that bizarre clock-slowing-down device, but it's never explained why it would be bad if they get it. Oh, sure, they're they're Illuminati, and we know from past experience that the Illuminati generally want to do bad things. But is it that difficult to remind us how evil they are? Frankly, the Enclave doesn't seem to bother anyone but me throughout the entire game, and I can be pretty annoying at times.
Again.. it is what you make it. Explore some more, read some more stuff, talk to some more people.. it all gets fleshed out if you put enough time into the game.
10) What the hell happened to thinking mutants? Besides Fawkes, the game is devoid of them.
It explains that the super mutants in DC are made from a different strain of the FEV virus. They aren't the same super mutants from fo1 and fo2.
11) Could anything be more mindnumbling boring than the DC run? Ground level, random supermutant attack, enter subway, random ghoul attacks, exit subways, run three blocks, random super mutant attack, down in the subways, random ghoul attacks, up above again, random supermutant attack....REPEAT TIL YOU SNAP GAME DISCS IN HALF.
The game never ever forces you to continue to do the same thing over and over. If you get bored of Downtown DC then leave and do somethig else for a while. There is also a lot more than just super mutants downtown. Mercenaries, Robots, Raiders... you name it they are there. You just have to explore.
12) If you're going to make a game without a single likable NPC, can you at least give us the ability to kill them?
This is a matter of personal opinion. I found a lot of NPC's that I liked, thought were funny, or downright made me laugh.
13) Zero mystery. There is no mystery in this game whatsoever. You never get hints that something insidious is going down. You don't see the enclaves effects slowly building up across the wastes. Every single boring, mindless shoot-and-loot quest could have been made infinitely more interesting if there had been a connection to some greater whole. If the slavers were afraid of the enclave, for example, and were being hired to round up people for tests. Or if the supermutants were progressively getting more perfect as you get closer to the source. Nope, instead, it's a stationary world where nothing changes. Even the random tidbits on computers were generally boring. Never thought I'd say this, but the computer entries you occasionally read in Doom 3 were insanely more intriguing than anything in F3.
You seem to have missed a lot of the plot and game world development. You should talk to more of the people scattered around the game and listen to the radio every once and a while.
14) I die at the end? Wow, nice and cliched. I don't even fully understand why I ran in and turned on the purifier. I mean, couldn't this wait? Couldn't we just take a breath, kill off every one in the enclave, make sure the water purifier is secure, get a decent radiation suit, and turn the thing on WITHOUT dying? And if this is the case, why couldn't I just send Fawkes in? He owes me one, right? What a dumb, dumb ending.
A video game with an ending? WTF??? OMG I KNOW!! Seriously man? The game does have an ending, but after one playthrough, you can choose to avoid it and play as long as you want. The world will continue on as long as you want it to. It gives the option of "closure" for people who like to play a game and be done with it, but also gives you many ways to continue playing, or replay. Maybe in DLC we can see what the game is like for the wasteland after the end?
15) Why is the BoS so ghetto? They feel like a group of stragglers who seem to have slightly better tech than other people. Boring.
Different sect of the Brotherhood. They aren't as strong or as organized as the Brotherhood is back west. If you ever stubled upon the Brotherhood Outcasts or tried to find out a bit more about Lyons, you would know why they are so ghetto.
Fallout 3 reminds me of a low budget movie that was written around a location. For example, let's say a bunch of students are given a warehouse to shoot in. The movie's OK, and the warehouse looks great, but after a while, you start to realize that the whole reason the movie exists is because of the warehouse. In the same way, the whole reason Fallout 3 exists is the art design. It's like the writers were handed a bunch of amazing conceptual drawings and told to write a story. It's hard to do this, which is why you come up with silly water purifier plots. So much of the game was wasted, from the History and Tech museums, all presidential monuments...
Games should not be written by the art department; it generally results in beautiful vistas and amazing landscapes with zero narrative substance.
Ok.. maybe if you were watching a movie like..Willy Wonka.. and you fast forwarded through all the conversations and watched only the songs and visual montages.. then yeah. Or for that matter, watching any action movie and fast forwarding through all the dialogue and watching only the action scenes and montages.
This game really killed me. It has nothing to do at this point with it NOT being F1 or F2. Frankly, when the game started up through when I left Megaton, I was actively looking forward to Fallout 4. Screw it. Bethesda did the same thing with Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (beautiful environment, horrible horrible story), and they should be ashamed.
There is NO reason why this game wasn't Half-life 2. Frankly, Doom 3 was a way better sequel. It's sort of like when President Eden (or was it Autumn?) says "The good guys won..." except we all know that by "good," he actually means bad. The bad guys won on this one, and it's pretty depressing.
In closing, it sounds to me like the game was either hyped up way too much for you or you hyped it up way too much for yourself, and you didn't put enough time into the game to get out of it what you were expecting.
Again, not flaming anyone or anything, just playing devil's advocate. Now feel free to destroy me, the first time poster.
