Impressions thread for positive impressions

The only think that irked me terribly in F3 is the lack of variety and reason. The story line just didn't jive. To many times your caught going Wtf?! That doesn't make any sense!

That and you need more weapons. Crafted and looted. Mind you Im patient when it comes to this. I can see more coming into the game soon enough.

Mostly the game just felt like it was fun and just needs a little love and attention from the mod artists!
Kudos to the mods that have come out already. My leveling, item deterioration and weapons damage finally make sense

 

To Geomancer > I agree, I found myself horribly irritated when NPC's would just disappear in the game, and apparently for no reason. I believe that happened in unmodded Oblivion games as well (maybe even in the modded versions?)

One of the other things you said really struck a cord with me too. In an earlier post you said you were afraid to play through it again, because you worried you would basically repeat the same thing again. I felt exactly the same way! I have two files currently, one where I am just running around killing everything, but the other is playing through the storyline, trying to do every sidequest I can find. One irritating thing is I find I complete quests before being given them, and another thing is, no, there are not that many. Not as many as you'd think there would be anyway.

With the other two Fallout games I could play them a dozen times and feel like I did a dozen different stories that were similar but different enough that I did not get bored. With this game, you do the vault thing, get out, go to Megaton, and it's basically the same general thing. The stats can all be maxed out by level 20, characters are cookiecutter versions of each other, there's no real difference. Playing a male or a female, things are basically the same, the game is not varied enough to want to play beyond the one time (unless you, like me, just want to kill everything the second, or maybe first, go-round.)

 

Re: This section is disheartening

I think you totally discount the level of immersion that imagination plays in the game experience. Like a comparison of books to movies, books are a much more intimate, immediate and detailed experience than movies can ever be. Live action divorces you from the role playing in RPG. I call games like Fallout 3, GTA, and others interactive FPS rather than RPG games. You just can't role-play.

 

First stage of your argument: Realism makes a game better.
Wrong - Unless you're playing a simulation, realism often mires games down in niceties that don't make a game better, or most importantly, more fun to play.

I'm going to tell you what the most realistic games in existence are right at this moment, and it will slap your little argument to death like a schoolyard girl being harassed by a giant squid.
Wargames, hex-based wargames, are the most realistic video games in existence bar none. Morale, logistics, terrain, line-of-sight, exposure, limited mobilization, the shit you'd never even think about in something like Operation Flashpoint are everyday details. John Tiller's wargames are amongst the best, and all these games are played via hexes (as in Fallout 1/2's system) and the units of infantry and battalions of armor are all just little "tablets" that fit onto hexes.

Sure you get the occasional game like winSPMBT: Main Battle Tank that throw in some elaborate 2D sprites, but that hardly matters. You go on about immersion like it has everything to do with the perspective and technology, but when I'm busy getting my infantry pinioned in a pass by German machine-gunners while attempting to smoke my way through and coordinate a light vehicular assault I feel like I'm managing the real damn thing, it's unparalleled in its pure ferocity, "immersion" at its best.
It's turn based, it's ugly, it looks like a board game, and at times I feel fucking terrified, In winSPMBT: Main Battle Tank the sound effects, and the adrenaline pumping line-of-sight system makes every game feel like a real battlefield.

Combine the unadulterated harshness of the gameplay with some subtle audio effects and you have an experience that not just rivals Rainbow Six, Fallout 3 or any other "immersive" game but completely destroys them in comparison.

Technology was never the problem, we've had first person RPGs since the beginning of the genre on the PC, and by 1993 there were first person RPGs that used primitive 3D graphics that were quite impressive for their time. Ultima Underworld was an unparalleled accomplishment. As hex based wargames can prove, technology doesn't get in the way of making a game "immersive", only the developer's talent factors into this regard.

The technology WAS around, and in 1997 it was pretty much a well established part of the genre, Daggerfall had been released, Ultima Underworld had made its mark, the M&M series was still going strong and several years before Betrayal at Krondor became one of the greatest RPGs ever made.
Not only that, but despite the fact that it came out in 1997, Fallout didn't look that spectacular, but its art design was impeccable and the atmosphere incredibly impressive, Black Isle certainly did not have their sights set on pure graphical excellence, but rather the subtle aesthetic.

Voice-acting is entirely arbitrary and its presence removes one of my favorite little touches in any RPG, the character's name being spoken by NPCs. "That kid from Vault 101" is just not as effective as "That fucking do-gooder shithead Timbleton."
Do you think that interactive fiction games would be more immersing if there was someone reading the descriptions to you? People voicing the different actors? Oftentimes silence is the best way to draw a person into an experience, just the soft humming of the PC in a dark room with some white text on a black background and that flashing prompt waiting for your next move.
Late nights with The Lurking Horror and A Mind Forever Voyaging still spark memories of leaning towards the monitor and jumping when someone tapped me on the shoulder, I was completely into the text, reading every exacting detail.

With Fallout, I could read every line of dialog and feel attached, it was directed to you, you could apply your own voice and personality to whoever spoke to you, every NPC looked different in each player's mind. The lack of visual or audio information at times creates a sense of mystified enjoyment.
That would be a relic of time, the inability to provide each NPC with a unique appearance because of memory restraints, however, text-based dialog is not, nor is perspective.

Comparatively, immersion seems to you as a purely cosmetic thing, you don't think of it as being involved in a game, but rather the game representing reality. Tetris is more immersing than Fallout 3, I forget where I am when I play Tetris on my DS at times, I'd be sitting on a bus and my stop had passed ten minutes ago. With Fallout 3, I sit and stare waiting for loading screens to finish and contemplate whether or not I should start my character over because Big Guns are spectacularly pointless.

Technology really doesn't lend itself to the experience of being entirely immersed, it can help, but it's not the primary component, what matters is fun and how much a game can draw you in because of that without presenting jarring obstructions to the experience, Fallout 1/2 were impeded by their bugs, Fallout 3 by its extensive use of poor dialog, annoying slow-motion combat, and arbitrary decisions with mechanical attempts to involve the player into situations with no real input on the player's part (see: Liberty Prime).

 

Bethesda should have given you a job as a writer

 

Fallout is very immersive. Also, since I like miniature wargaming (but I'm not doing it due to costs of miniatures/effort needed to paint them), I find the isometric perspective/turn based combat thing very attractive.

Also, I strongly dislike having to hear dialogues in games - even with Fallout's good voice acting and excellent talking heads. They take too long to hear.

 

1. Leon Boyarsky never worked on Van Buren.
2. Van Buren was going to let you choose between turn-based and real time, with TB being the default.

 

And with the whole game being balanced for turn-based.

 

There is actually a quote from the Fallout devs saying exactly the opposite. Can anybody dig this up? Ausir?

Yes what could I possibly do without the random items like the useless items like bowls and such that were in Fallout. Oh wait no that was Oblivion.

Unless the characters don't change expression and you can't see their hands because when you talk to someone, they mentally grab your head and force you to look them directly in the eye. Name your favorite book, then tell me if you get immersed by it more or less than Fallout 3. I think most people would choose their favorite book.

 

I'd tend to agree with most of the OP, especially for the combat. I like to think that Bethesda gave the fast twitch counter-strike audience the option to play FO 3 like an FPS to which the game mechanics lend itself to. For the nostalgic players, VATS is by all definitions, the turn based combat we were accustomed to in fallout 1 and 2. I'll be honest when I say that I would get really bored in Fallout 2 when I had to wait for every single mantis, ant, or Floater to take its turn moving.

The story is also acceptable. The purpose of the game: purify drinking water for what's left of civilization. How is that any different than in Fallout 1 where you had a mission to do the same? Only this time instead of just saving your handful of vault dwellers you actually provide it to the entire wasteland.

My one biggest gripe about the story is the huge departure from the Oblivion overtones of really open ended gameplay. I'll admit, I did expect this game to take a page right out of Oblivion insofar that I could hurry up and complete the main quest line in under 10 levels, then be free to actually explore and enjoy the rest of the content. I do declare, that Bethsoft did screw the pooch on this one, forcing players to start the game all over and re-do the quests while avoiding advancing the plot just to see what else is out there, and do it all without glorious Power Armor

Also, if some people are not able to disscet the OP and just try to attack the OP and condescend to him because of your precious registration date, understand that maybe he (I know I did) has been around this site for *years*. Only forgetting my original username/password forced me to make a new one.

 

It is not "by all definitions" turn based combat. It isn't turn based combat by any stretch, it's a pause function that allows you to make targeted shots. There are no "turns" with the computer enemies, time simply slows down, you take no damage, and all the while your character locks onto a certain enemy body part and takes a certain amount of shots.

There's nothing turn based about it, at most it's slow motion.
Waiting for enemies to complete their turns is par with all turn based games, just like idiotic and cheating AI is on par with real time shooters.

First off, the quest for the Water Chip/GECK in the first two Fallouts were entirely arbitrary, they merely set up an intro and goal for the player to explore until he got to the real meat of the story, which is the Master's Army or Enclave depending on which FO you are playing.

FO3's story is just a typical Sci-Fi story about good versus bad with a few variations on the motivations of various characters, such as Colonel Autumn, it's all very small scale and doesn't compare to the Master in any way. To make it worse, the writing that provides the meat of the story is sub par and doesn't even scratch the surface of the quality FO1/2 had.
Short two sentence interactions with major main quest NPCs is not excusable.

I honestly don't care about this, many of the greatest RPGs in existence end with the culmination of the main quest, including the original Fallout, my only complaint in this regard is that they don't make it obvious that advancing to a certain point in the main quest will prevent you from breaking off and exploring.

 

How isn't it? Turn based combat stopped the game and allowed you to choose which parts of an enemy you wanted to attack. You then accepted your actions, exchanged fire, and waited until your next turn to do it all over again.

Boring.

With VATS you can do all the things turn based combat let you do in Fallout 1 and 2, but instead of waiting another turn for your AP to restart you can stem the tide by engaging in some real time combat. Then, if the fight isn't over yet you can go VATS again. It really isn't *that* different. The only difference is choice, and I like to think choice is important for us to have.

And will you people stop complaining about not being able to use stims in combat? It's as simple as exiting VATS and pulling up your pip boy. And that doesn't cost you precious AP.

You're looking at all the stories in a very linear way Fallout 1, find a waterchip so we can survive. Oh, since that was too short here is your second mission: go find and destroy the super mutants. Fallout 1 gave you both a short and long term goal to achieve. You could also logically argue that the second half of Fallout 1s quest was to 'save the entire wasteland' since if you didn't they found your vault and killed you all anyway.

And how is Fallout 3's linear main quest more so than Fallout 1? In Fallout 1 if you didn't snap to and find the waterchip you lost. Game over. In Fallout 3 you can choose to absolutely ignore the main quest with no consequences save for not being able to wear power armor without first advancing the main plot a little. And if you think time limits in video games are a good idea you're proveably wrong.

It would appear that everyone here is jaded beyond the point of accepting Fallout 3 for being a decent game because we all had to wait so damn long for it (10 years).

 

What the hell?
I just told you in a short paragraph why Fallout 3's VATS was not turn based.
YOU DON'T TAKE TURNS, YOU the PLAYER fires at the enemy while the enemy STILL ATTACKS YOU, at the same time, SIMULTANEOUSLY, it's real time, it's ALL real time. The only thing comparable is that it pauses, and that's idiotic considering the only time FO1/2's combat was in the process of pausing was when it began.
Do you understand that taking turns involves going one AFTER the other? Not at the same time?

As for turn based being boring, that's your own damn fault for being incapable of appreciating a broader spectrum of gaming than just real-time killingfests. I had more fun with Korsun Pocket than I will ever have with any real time game.
And all shots in FO1/2 weren't targeted for Christ's sake.

The storyline proves itself linear because there is no straying from its path.
In FO1 if you wanted to go ahead and kill the Master and destroy the Military Base before even touching the Water Chip you could go ahead and do it. You could blow up the Military Base and return the Water Chip then kill the Master.

The first time I finished Fallout I had killed the Master thinking he was some completely insignificant quest bit unrelated to the main quest, then the Overseer sends me out to destroy the source of the Super Mutants and color me surprised.
No one said Fallout 1's time limit was a good idea, but no one except morons ever found themselves hindered by the initial time limit for the Water Chip, it's a heinously forgiving amount of time to find it, and even if you can't find Necropolis by 150 ingame days then you could buy a shitload more time from the Water Merchants.

EDIT: Dammit Sander, leave it to you to telepathically post everything I was going to post in a different way.

Well at least he has two sources now.

 

What. Is. The. Difference. In all 3 games you stopped time to make decisions on what to do. Now comes Fallout 3 and you can either NOT stop time (what is this, Max Payne?) and FPS your way to victory -OR- use VATS to acheive the *exact* same ends. Why are we complaining about being able to play one way or another? Just because Fallout 3 incorporates a more realistic sense of you know, time not actually stopping so you can fuddle around doesn't make it terrible, it's just not what we expected. That doesn't make it stupid.

Thats great. Waste our time with a completely arbitrary set of chores so we can soak up the 'meat of the story.' Here's an idea, make the meat of the story made evident as you actually play the story. GASP! What a contrived and deplorable disembarkment from the good ol' glory days of... oh yea, 'arbitrary' plot fillers.

The writing? Eh, some of it was lacking. No one is arguing that it wasn't. But what would you throw down your big rubber stamp of 'acceptable' on as far as dialogue choices? 25 minutes of speech options that just wasted time and drove the production time several months and millions of dollars overdue? Fallout 1 and 2 you clicked on speech options that were made available to you based on your previous actions and some of your stat points and it's the EXACT same in FO 3.

You just said the same thing I did, but you claimed not to care about it. Yes, all great games culminate with the completion of it's intended purpose (or else you would still be playing Mario Brothers infinite replay value.) We were all pissed off when we DID beat the game without getting to sample the rest of it and we were forced to DIE or KILL someone else without being able to just carry on. THAT is very stupid, but it doesn't mean the story is dumb or lacking.

And how can you possibly hate LIBERTY PRIME? The game was over the second you returned with the GECK but we had no way of knowing. So to make up for it Bethesda gave us 30 minutes of watching a giant robot shoot lasers out of his eyes, kick Enclave assholes, throw thousand pound bombs like footballs, and recite anti-communism rhetoric worthy of any gritty war movie.

 

As mentioned above, VATS isn't turn based.

Chess is turn based. I move, then you move, then I move.

If chess were like VATS, we'd both move at the same time.

See the difference?

 

Yes, it's completely different.

THERE ARE NO TURNS.

Thus, it is NOT turn based combat.

 

I'll concede, Fallout 3 isn't turn based, but not being a turn based game lends itself to more surprise, and it actually makes the sneak skill worth a damn. If you're not careful you could get killed in a really dumb fashion. Fallout 1 and 2 you could actually see around corners and into other rooms, see 6 supermutants standing around with their dicks in their hands and plan accordingly.

Which also defeats the purpose of this chess analogy you keep mentioning, because at least in chess I don't know what you're thinking.

I guess I should say I appreciate VATS because it lets you do the same thing the turn based system in Fallout did by targeting body parts, which could let you make up for inferior firepower or lackluster skills, while not actually being predictable turn based gameplay.