It's not a baaad game, but i really hate it.

[Shylock]

I'll star apologizing for my poor english...

I've been playing this game for two days (almost uninterruptedly) and i had to tell someone who could understand my pain what are my feelings about it.

Why i hate it?

1) Poor graphics. If the graphics were just as F2, i would be content. Even today, they still look cool. Instead of it, they opted for the 3d-thing. But they made it crappy, choppy, lifeless... completely outdated.

2) The graphics again. They are ugly, they are lifeless, they are choppy. But it's obvious that that's were they placed the most of there efforts. I'm fully convinced that they dedicated more time to the texture of the floor than... every thing else?

3) What the hell did they do to the character sheet? It's terrible! awful! almost disgusting! They destroyed the fallout 1 and 2 character sheet.
Tag skills? completely useless. May be you don't remember, but in the earlier fallouts you needed less skill points to develope the tagged skills than you needed for the non-tagged ones. Now it just adds some points to the skill... that's crap.
You also can't have more than 100 points in any skill. I use a sniper rifle, i have 100 in small guns, i have 8 in perception, and i also have perks that's supposed to enhance my accuracy with VATS, but still i only have 38% chance of hitting the torso of a guy that's 100mats away... wtf? it's a sniper rifle! i can't have more than 100 points in small guns! It's absurd!
I also noticed you choose a perk every time you level up instead of doing so every 3 levels like it was in the others. It is just boring. In the other games it was a "special" moment. You where going to choose a special hability! And you didn't knew what would you be able to choose, since you couldn't see all the perks, even if they were not available yet! It was pretty exciting. Now, at least till level 10, more than a half of the available perks consist in adding skill points to your character... that's not an special hability, i'm afraid, and you can see what's coming next and what do you have to do to be able to choose any perk... "no sir, i don't like it". Also, they are less than they were in F1 and F2.
Almost forgot! Where are the traits!? I want them back! And not as perks!
There are also some skills missing. That's simply sad.

4) The interfaces simply stink. They didn't even bothered in making an image for every item (the inventory ones). I remember there were A LOT of items in F1 and F2. They had an image for every thing, and ALSO a DESCRIPTION. Why the hell didn't they put a description for the items? I makes me mad. Half the time i find myself carrying items i simply don't know what they do, or if they are useful or what, just because i don't know what is it! Image: pack of unrecognizable things. Description: None at all. It makes me MAD.
The bartering interface is just poor. It's bad enough to keep me away of bartering with anyone unless it's absolutely needed, otherwise, i don't want to even see that screen. Why didn't they use categories like in oblivion? There are too many items! I want a gun, not cheese puffs, or scrap metal, or a fork, or a hat, I WANT A GUN!!!! LET ME SEE YOUR GUNS AND JUST YOUR GUNS, PLEEEEEASE!!!! Also, if you took something from the person you are bartering with and you regret of what you took, you have search your hoooooooooole inventory to find it and give it back or cancel the bartering sequence and start giving and taking again...
The dialogue interface is as poor as the others. There only can be displayed 3 lines at a time, so you'll have to scroll. Luckily (?) the dialogues are so basic and oblivion-tupid that most of the times it's enough, but if it isn't... sometimes you don't notice there are more options, sometimes you get lost during the scrolling due to the poor 3 lines you can see at a time... that's another "mmmm... no sir. I don't like it".
5) I wish i'm wrong, but... in these two days i couldn't find any mob. There is no mob in fallout 3? If that's true, then this game is lost. There's no fallout without a mob. If i come across a bethesda guy in the street, i will shoot his knees without hesitation, they don't deserve less than that. Also, there's no city like New Reno. There MUST be a city full of whores, drugs, casinos, mobs... again, this is not fallout.
6) Where's the desert? You can't walk more than 100 mts without finding someone, and probabilities are 99 vs 1 that you will find raiders. That's as absurd as boring. They have nothing of value, they are too easy to kill, and their AI is simply sad.
7) NPC's are blind and deaf. You can shoot a magnum 44 and no one will hear it. They can see his fellow raider die just in front of them, and have no reaction. They had the technology to make NPCs moderately aware of what was happening around them back in the '90. There's no excuse for this.
8) Dialogues are boring as hell. I haven't found a good dialogue yet, except, may be the one with harold.
9) There are... what? 5 different critters? Booooooooooriiiiiiiing.
10) What where they thinking when they put vampires in the game? I mean... it was ok for oblivion, but in fallout... well, it's out of the question.
11) Why so much radiation? There wasn't so much in F1 and F2... wich happened 100 years ago, theoricly. And the war was 200 years ago... do they live using RadAway every day in japan?
12) Power armors are pussy. The brotherhood of steel guys look like crazy people with garbage tied to there bodys. I hate the power armors.
13) No moral decisions. The worst thing you can do in the game is blow megaton, wich is really a bad thing to do... i mean... blow upo people is bad, you know? But there's nothing else. You can threat people, and lie. Those are the "bad" things you can do.

What really annoys me is that they turned fallout into a pussy game. It's just pussy. They destroyed the game's spirit. I don't understand why did they buy the licence of fallout. They could just make this piece of garbage and call it "A pussy post-nuclear game" or whatever they wanted and it would had been the same. There are practically no allusions to the other games and i doubt that the ideas of a nuclear war and a nuclear refuge can't be used without rights.

Uff... i'm tired, i'll continue with this later. See you later.

 

[nukelight]

"Why didn't they use categories like in oblivion? There are too many items! I want a gun, not cheese puffs, or scrap metal, or a fork, or a hat, I WANT A GUN!!!! LET ME SEE YOUR GUNS AND JUST YOUR GUNS, PLEEEEEASE!!!!"



Have you even made an effort to read the manual or even play the game? If you did, and I'm going out on a limb here you would realise that you can toggle through what the merchant is selling by CATAGORY... For the 360 it is the LT and RT.

 

[Bloody William]

I'll star apologizing for my poor english...

I've been playing this game for two days (almost uninterruptedly) and i had to tell someone who could understand my pain what are my feelings about it.

Why i hate it?

1) Poor graphics. If the graphics were just as F2, i would be content. Even today, they still look cool. Instead of it, they opted for the 3d-thing. But they made it crappy, choppy, lifeless... completely outdated.

2) The graphics again. They are ugly, they are lifeless, they are choppy. But it's obvious that that's were they placed the most of there efforts. I'm fully convinced that they dedicated more time to the texture of the floor than... every thing else?

I strongly disagree. Graphically, the game uses technology that's a little over two years old, and still looks pretty darn good. Did you think that walking around a wasteland in first person would look anything besides ugly and lifeless? And I haven't experienced the choppiness. If you're playing on a PC, maybe you need to turn up the settings or enable some disabled graphic features. On the 360, it looks great.

Even if its graphics aren't particularly complex compared to, say, Gears of War 2 or Far Cry 2 or Crysys, its drawing distance is nothing short of remarkable. There's no fog, no pop-in of set pieces. If you look at the wasteland from the top of a peak during the day, you see all of the Wasteland you would realistically be able to see. That's just impressive.

3) What the hell did they do to the character sheet? It's terrible! awful! almost disgusting! They destroyed the fallout 1 and 2 character sheet.
Tag skills? completely useless. May be you don't remember, but in the earlier fallouts you needed less skill points to develope the tagged skills than you needed for the non-tagged ones. Now it just adds some points to the skill... that's crap.
You also can't have more than 100 points in any skill. I use a sniper rifle, i have 100 in small guns, i have 8 in perception, and i also have perks that's supposed to enhance my accuracy with VATS, but still i only have 38% chance of hitting the torso of a guy that's 100mats away... wtf? it's a sniper rifle! i can't have more than 100 points in small guns! It's absurd!

I actually agree with you here. The tag skills seem to be just "bonuses" rather than a major factor in distributing skill points, and I would have much preferred to be able to push skills up past 100 for the reason you mention. The sniper rifle might be ridiculously deadly from mid-long range, but if you see a guy in the distance, you're trained in the weapon, and you have a powerful scope, I'd like to be able to hit him a bit easier.

I also noticed you choose a perk every time you level up instead of doing so every 3 levels like it was in the others. It is just boring. In the other games it was a "special" moment. You where going to choose a special hability! And you didn't knew what would you be able to choose, since you couldn't see all the perks, even if they were not available yet! It was pretty exciting. Now, at least till level 10, more than a half of the available perks consist in adding skill points to your character... that's not an special hability, i'm afraid, and you can see what's coming next and what do you have to do to be able to choose any perk... "no sir, i don't like it". Also, they are less than they were in F1 and F2.

I disagree. There are 60 perks in the game, many which you can only get based on your skills and attributes. When you get a new level, you can bump up those factors with the basic perks (Gun Nut, Daddy's Boy), or really make your character unique as the game goes on. The higher level perks really are diverse and interesting.

Almost forgot! Where are the traits!? I want them back! And not as perks!
There are also some skills missing. That's simply sad.

I too miss the traits, but I don't lament the missing skills. "Medicine" is way better than arbitrarily breaking up "First Aid" and "Doctor," and since there are no non-grenade thrown weapons, "Explosives" neatly ties together "Throwing" and "Traps." Mines and grenades both require similar competencies, and since thrown weapons (knives, shuriken, etc.) are essentially useless in Fallout (and have been since the first game), and since the only traps in the game you can set yourself are mines, this puts two complimentary skills together as one solid pool for points. If there were more traps to set, or more weapons to throw, two different skills would be justified.

4) The interfaces simply stink. They didn't even bothered in making an image for every item (the inventory ones). I remember there were A LOT of items in F1 and F2. They had an image for every thing, and ALSO a DESCRIPTION. Why the hell didn't they put a description for the items? I makes me mad. Half the time i find myself carrying items i simply don't know what they do, or if they are useful or what, just because i don't know what is it! Image: pack of unrecognizable things. Description: None at all. It makes me MAD.
The bartering interface is just poor. It's bad enough to keep me away of bartering with anyone unless it's absolutely needed, otherwise, i don't want to even see that screen. Why didn't they use categories like in oblivion? There are too many items! I want a gun, not cheese puffs, or scrap metal, or a fork, or a hat, I WANT A GUN!!!! LET ME SEE YOUR GUNS AND JUST YOUR GUNS, PLEEEEEASE!!!! Also, if you took something from the person you are bartering with and you regret of what you took, you have search your hoooooooooole inventory to find it and give it back or cancel the bartering sequence and start giving and taking again...

Um, hitting left and right (or is it LT and RT? I forget which switches between you and the merchant and which flips through categories) lets you go through all of your and the merchant's different item categories. Weapons, ammo, clothing, miscellaneous stuff, chems, it's all sorted pretty neatly. And generally the stuff you barter/trade for sits at the top of your/the merchant's main list, so you can easily cancel or swap back without penalty.

The dialogue interface is as poor as the others. There only can be displayed 3 lines at a time, so you'll have to scroll. Luckily (?) the dialogues are so basic and oblivion-tupid that most of the times it's enough, but if it isn't... sometimes you don't notice there are more options, sometimes you get lost during the scrolling due to the poor 3 lines you can see at a time... that's another "mmmm... no sir. I don't like it".

A really minor issue, though I agree with basically what you're saying. Adding another line to the dialog window would have made conversations a lot more pleasant.

5) I wish i'm wrong, but... in these two days i couldn't find any mob. There is no mob in fallout 3? If that's true, then this game is lost. There's no fallout without a mob. If i come across a bethesda guy in the street, i will shoot his knees without hesitation, they don't deserve less than that. Also, there's no city like New Reno. There MUST be a city full of whores, drugs, casinos, mobs... again, this is not fallout.

Um... mob? I've been swarmed by mobs of radscorpions, and there are certainly mobs of feral ghouls around. Not huge mobs, but still pretty impressive and dangerous if you're out of grenades. NPC mobs? Not so much, and I'm not sure where you're going with that.

New Reno was... well, Reno. There are whores, drugs, and casinos there already. This is the East Coast, where... pretty much just the drugs, with the occasional whore.

6) Where's the desert? You can't walk more than 100 mts without finding someone, and probabilities are 99 vs 1 that you will find raiders. That's as absurd as boring. They have nothing of value, they are too easy to kill, and their AI is simply sad.

Once again, different coast, different region. Not all wastelands are plain deserts. The Capital Wasteland is more a ruined urban/suburban sprawl.

7) NPC's are blind and deaf. You can shoot a magnum 44 and no one will hear it. They can see his fellow raider die just in front of them, and have no reaction. They had the technology to make NPCs moderately aware of what was happening around them back in the '90. There's no excuse for this.

I haven't had that problem yet. I know Oblivion had those issues and I certainly expect to see that issue crop up at least once when I play, but generally if I take a shot at a raider, his friends notice.

8) Dialogues are boring as hell. I haven't found a good dialogue yet, except, may be the one with harold.

Again, I disagree. Lots of the people are cookie-cutter, but there are some great characters in the game, like Moira and

[spoiler:9b56d1cc35]The Founding Father Protectron in the basement of the National Archives (I got his wig), or Abraham Washington and the various other folk in Rivet City (many of whom are total dicks), or the members of The Family near Arefu (I almost killed Vance out of spite just for being a douchey goth, but instead I worked out a surprisingly peaceful deal between him and Arefu)...[/spoiler:9b56d1cc35]

9) There are... what? 5 different critters? Booooooooooriiiiiiiing.

Radroaches, Radscorpions, dogs, mirelurks, Yao Guai, centaurs (if you count them), mole rats, giant ants, bloatflies, Deathclaws... there's more than five critters.

10) What where they thinking when they put vampires in the game? I mean... it was ok for oblivion, but in fallout... well, it's out of the question.

Yes, Bethsoft has a weird thing about vampires. However,

[spoiler:9b56d1cc35]The Family wasn't Vampires. They were cannibals (which aren't too unusual in Fallout), but led by a guy trying to embrace what he thought was their "heritage" as vampires. They weren't vampires, they were just flesh-eating lunatics led by a gothy douchebag.[/spoiler:9b56d1cc35]

11) Why so much radiation? There wasn't so much in F1 and F2... wich happened 100 years ago, theoricly. And the war was 200 years ago... do they live using RadAway every day in japan?

Water soaks up rads, and every instance of radiation outside of water in Fallout 3 is accompanied by actual nuclear waste or other sources. It's not random, and I'm glad to see radiation get a bit more play than the frankly underwhelming use of radiation in the first two games. I mean, it's a nuclear-blasted wasteland. Rads will remain.

12) Power armors are pussy. The brotherhood of steel guys look like crazy people with garbage tied to there bodys. I hate the power armors.

The Outcasts look like that, but the Brotherhood themselves look pretty clean and shiny.

Compare the BoS power armor in Fallout and Fallout 2 with the armor in Fallout 3. They're really similar. The shinier, newer stuff in FO2 was used by the Enclave, and that's in Fallout 3 too.

13) No moral decisions. The worst thing you can do in the game is blow megaton, wich is really a bad thing to do... i mean... blow upo people is bad, you know? But there's nothing else. You can threat people, and lie. Those are the "bad" things you can do.

You can threaten, you can lie, you can steal, you can start fights, you can kill... what more were you considering?

 

[Ausdoerrt]

That was a useless rant, but I agree on one point. It's a pretty boring game for me and I can't play it for more than 2 hours strait. I could play original FOs for 20 hours straight.

 

[Touquet]

That was a useless rant, but I agree on one point. It's a pretty boring game for me and I can't play it for more than 2 hours strait. I could play original FOs for 20 hours straight.

I'm agree with you, And with the mod done for F2 I still get excited to play after had finishing the game again ang again.

Now that I know there is [spoiler:e7a87ba35b]Vampire[/spoiler:e7a87ba35b] in F3, it's going worts... I go take something for my headick!!!

EDIT:

But they made a Fallout shooter, I give then that point.

 

[Shylock]

Bloody William:

I can't remember how to quote, so...

"I strongly disagree. Graphically, the game uses technology that's a little over two years old, and still looks pretty darn good. Did you think that walking around a wasteland in first person would look anything besides ugly and lifeless? And I haven't experienced the choppiness. If you're playing on a PC, maybe you need to turn up the settings or enable some disabled graphic features. On the 360, it looks great.

Even if its graphics aren't particularly complex compared to, say, Gears of War 2 or Far Cry 2 or Crysys, its drawing distance is nothing short of remarkable. There's no fog, no pop-in of set pieces. If you look at the wasteland from the top of a peak during the day, you see all of the Wasteland you would realistically be able to see. That's just impressive."

The doesn't look horrible, but they aren't better than oblivion. The characters move like muppets and barely have any expressions in there faces. When i said that it was "lifeless" i meant that, ok, it's a desert, but there's no wind, no dust, it's like a picture. There could have been things moving because of the wind, dust flying here and there... i don't know, i insist, it looks like a picture.

"I disagree. There are 60 perks in the game, many which you can only get based on your skills and attributes. When you get a new level, you can bump up those factors with the basic perks (Gun Nut, Daddy's Boy), or really make your character unique as the game goes on. The higher level perks really are diverse and interesting."

i'm level 10 and i'm sure that the last time i had come up a level, 70% of the perks proposed me to increase skill points. Also, 60 is not too much, in fact, is less when you consider that there are A LOT that just give skill points and a pack that where traits in previous fallouts. I remember the first time i had a fallout 2 trainer... i was amazed of the number of perks one could get and i had never seen because i didn't make a character capable of aquiring them. I still don't like F3's perks, i find them few and boring.

"I too miss the traits, but I don't lament the missing skills. "Medicine" is way better than arbitrarily breaking up "First Aid" and "Doctor," and since there are no non-grenade thrown weapons, "Explosives" neatly ties together "Throwing" and "Traps." Mines and grenades both require similar competencies, and since thrown weapons (knives, shuriken, etc.) are essentially useless in Fallout (and have been since the first game), and since the only traps in the game you can set yourself are mines, this puts two complimentary skills together as one solid pool for points. If there were more traps to set, or more weapons to throw, two different skills would be justified."

If i remember correctly, first aid and doctor depended on different stats. Depending on the type of character you did, may be you could take advantage of one or another. Also, they made different things. You could get some HP with the first aid skill, but you couldn't repair crippleness. I agree that the traps skill was kind of useless and no one wanted to spend skill points in it. I guess throwing desappeared because there's nothing else than granades to throw, but i think they could have put something throwable besides them. They could just stick it with unarmed or whatever. There's no gambling either, may be because... there are no casinos and no gamble on fights? Damn.

"Um, hitting left and right (or is it LT and RT? I forget which switches between you and the merchant and which flips through categories) lets you go through all of your and the merchant's different item categories. Weapons, ammo, clothing, miscellaneous stuff, chems, it's all sorted pretty neatly. And generally the stuff you barter/trade for sits at the top of your/the merchant's main list, so you can easily cancel or swap back without penalty."

I love you.

"Um... mob? I've been swarmed by mobs of radscorpions, and there are certainly mobs of feral ghouls around. Not huge mobs, but still pretty impressive and dangerous if you're out of grenades. NPC mobs? Not so much, and I'm not sure where you're going with that.

New Reno was... well, Reno. There are whores, drugs, and casinos there already. This is the East Coast, where... pretty much just the drugs, with the occasional whore."

I looked for the translation in the internet and... you know. with "mob" i ment gangsters, organized crime... it's "mafia" in spanish, look for the translation if you wish.
I've never been in the US, but... there are no whores, "mafias", gambling, etc in the east coast? If there aren't... it would have been funnier to supose that 200 years later there are. That was the base of fallout: a depravated, ruined, inmoral, brutal, and sometimes senseless world in wich you could do whatever you want.

"Once again, different coast, different region. Not all wastelands are plain deserts. The Capital Wasteland is more a ruined urban/suburban sprawl."

Yes, but i what i wanted to point was that you never feel alone out there... it's a raider jungle, not a desert. And there are only riders and critters. You almost never find anything different than riders and critters, and always a few. You don't find Yakuzas, members of some strange cult, soldiers from the brotherhood of steel, tribals, hermits (or are they the scavengers?), carnivore plants, pigrats, wolves (those unnecesary mutated dogs?), floaters, mantis, DIFFERENT caravans (they look all pretty much the same and there are almost none of them), people fighting each other... the ones that appear were already in F1 and F2. Oh, wait, i'm being unfair. The ants that spit fire are a great idea, not to mension the bigger ants and the smaller ants (pfff). Talking seriously, the only new characters are the mirelurks. So they invented almost nothing. I can only see characters missing, almost none new, except for the brotherhood outcast (that was their name?) and the mirelurks.

"I haven't had that problem yet. I know Oblivion had those issues and I certainly expect to see that issue crop up at least once when I play, but generally if I take a shot at a raider, his friends notice."

Sneak and manage to stay "hidden". Shoot the face of a raider hat's in the sight of another. The other won't notice either the deafing sound of your sniper rifle or the pieces of the brain of his buddy hitting his face. Shoot in a metro station and no ghouls will attend your call. They are as deaf as blind.

Yes, Bethsoft has a weird thing about vampires. However,

"Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)
The Family wasn't Vampires. They were cannibals (which aren't too unusual in Fallout), but led by a guy trying to embrace what he thought was their "heritage" as vampires. They weren't vampires, they were just flesh-eating lunatics led by a gothy douchebag."

If you recover more HPs from drinking a bag of blood than drinking water, for me, you're a vampire. In fact, a boring vampire since you don't have the cool habilities of a vampire.

"Water soaks up rads, and every instance of radiation outside of water in Fallout 3 is accompanied by actual nuclear waste or other sources. It's not random, and I'm glad to see radiation get a bit more play than the frankly underwhelming use of radiation in the first two games. I mean, it's a nuclear-blasted wasteland. Rads will remain."

I insist, japan manages to live without radaways today, 50 years after the bombs... i think 200 years is more than enough to clean it. In fallout 1 and 2 there was (a lot of) radiation in certain places only, as old nuclear reactors and stuff. Radiation was just a flavor.


"The Outcasts look like that, but the Brotherhood themselves look pretty clean and shiny.

Compare the BoS power armor in Fallout and Fallout 2 with the armor in Fallout 3. They're really similar. The shinier, newer stuff in FO2 was used by the Enclave, and that's in Fallout 3 too."

I don't mind if they are clean or dusty, what i dislike is the model. The power armor in F1 and F2 made you look like a robot, like a space marine of starcraft. This one is a "modern-medieval" armor. The armor is not a machine like in the earlier games, it's... just an armor? A metal suit with a gas mask? And i find it just ugly.

"You can threaten, you can lie, you can steal, you can start fights, you can kill... what more were you considering?"

I guess it's part of the no-mafia thing. No one (except burke) asks you go and kill people for money. I still haven't found a camp of slavers. The only "evil force" in the wasteland is the mutants and they won't talk to you. At the end, you can't join any evil faction, you can only be stupidly (and mostly innocently) evil in the game.

I'll keep saying what annoys me of the game...

14) Another thing that bothers me: no big cities. I guess that's because you are already in a city (WDC), but i feel it equally dissapointing. I guess they made it this way because the HAD to make the "oblivion effect": you reeeeeeeally travel when you travel, ya' know? That was the worst idea for fallout. I liked the variety. They could use the same traveling method of the earlier games and save the realtime travel for another time. In this way the encounters could be better, the outdoorsman skill would still be there, and instead of focusing in rendering rocks and dust, they could focus on making cities, factions, history and all the stuff wich is far more interesting than the damn wasteland.

15) Few useful items. There are few guns. I've just seen flamers, miniguns, sniper rifles, hunting rifles, 10mm pistol (and chinese variation), SMG, assault rifle (and chinese variation), frag granades, pulse granades, baseball bats (i wonder why there weren't in the earlier games), that tool to replace wheels that i can't remember how is called, knifes, sawed shotgun, combat shotgun, power fist, sledge hammer, laser pistols, laser rifles, rocket launchers, the BB gun... and i think that's it. Very poor. I haven't found any special weapon as the Bozar, the strange shotgun that Cassidy carried, the strange assault rifles you could find here and there, the alien pistol, the solar pistol, etc... and didn't find yet rippers, other varieties of miniguns and flamethrowers, those mini-katanas the yakuzas carried, gatling laser, plasma guns (rifle, pistol or granade), pancor jack-hammer... i don't know. There where lots of guns in previous fallouts. Here they are scarce. And there aren't different types of bullets (hollow point, metal jacketed). The same applyes to armors. The only new thing you have their is are those clothes that give you some insignificant bonus and stuff.

16) I only found one NPC that can be added to the party (not including Dog Meat).

17) The combat system is FPS with VATS. There is nothing even close to a turn based combat. The VATS is like a bonus you have to shoot your enemies regardeless your real hability at FPS games. The action points only limits it's indiscriminated usage... but this way you finally find yourself playing an FPS because you're not gonna just wait til you have action points again.

18) Isn't there another way to see what's needed to build custom weapons than going to the working bench and trying to do it? I know what items i need to make a rail gun, but i don't know how many.

Grrrrrrrr... It makes me mad. But i'll point some things that i liked.

1) If you don't keep your guns repaired, you have problems to reload. That's a nice detail. But... you need the same item to perform repairs... that's kind of silly, unreal and sometimes irritating.

2) I like the idea of having to scavenge constantly. It really gives flavor to the game.

3) The VATS thing... it's an insult for the original fallout combat system, but i have to admit that it is very realistic in terms of environment (?). It really matters if the target is covered and it's position. i mean... if you can't see his arm cause it is behind a rock or even his torso, then you can't shoot it or your probabilities of success are lower. Very good work indeed.

4) Some views are amazing and i really like how ghouls (and feral ghouls) look.

Wow, can't think of anything else... i don't know why i'm still playing it. jajajaja

See you later

 

[BoisBrule]

"I still haven't found a camp of slavers."

I have. More than one. Plus mercs, wastelanders, a handful of caravans, drug cookers, gangs... the game takes place within the confines of a single city and it's outlying suburbs. It stands to reason that it would be populated as it is.

Isn't there another way to see what's needed to build custom weapons than going to the working bench and trying to do it? I know what items i need to make a rail gun, but i don't know how many.

Schematics.
Personally, I don't bother with much weapons building; other than the cap mines, I find the "buildable" weapons to be rather silly. I choose to ignore the abilty.

There are few guns

More than enough. As with the earlier games, I choose to ignore the more "Sci-fi" weapons as much as possible. As for others weapons, I've found rippers... and they are suitably rare. No need to have everyone running around with one, and if you COULD find them with gleeful abandon, you'd most likely be upset that they ruined the flavour of the game. Don't confuse your approach to the game with a lack of variety.. so far I see many of your arguments simply as evidence that you aren't paying very good attention.

stuff wich is far more interesting than the damn wasteland.

Well, the wasteland is pretty dull from an isometric view. From a FP view, it can lead to better use of terrain and setting... and it's hardly a wasteland, it's a suburb.

you can only be stupidly (and mostly innocently) evil in the game

umm... that depends once again, on how you play the game. It's also easy to become evil on purpose, no? Some might say that a stoned loner murdering people throughout D.C to take their stuff and sell it was "evil". No stupidity involved. Getting caught stealing, and having to murder a man to get away COULD be seen as "stupidly evil", but it is, in reality, evil behaviour, isn't it? Do you not consider that deserving of the title "evil"? How about shooting a man before you know if he's friend or foe? Should there be a seperate alignment of "Didn't mean it!". Besides... there's also "very evil" to aspire to.

japan manages to live without radaways today, 50 years after the bombs

Different bomb, different scale. Pointless argument. We're talking about a world-ending event in FO.


-The ants that spit fire? You didn't get the hamfisted reference to "Them" did you? (Hmm.. perhaps not as hamfisted as I thought, could be that Bethesda overestimates much of it's audience?) Which, in case you're wondering, is a fantastic retro-futuristic monster flick... perfectly befitting the Fallout universe. In my opinion, adding "Them" was a very good example of Bethesda retaining a FO flavour.

-Organized crime thrives when there is "Crime" to be done. If whores are available freely, and drugs are available freely, and nobody gives a rat's ass if you stole something because they'll buy it anyways...what the hell does a crime boss do exactly? Rig bingo games? No market, no criminal syndicate.

I like the game. I do. I see enough references to the originals, enough attempts to maintain the "feel" of the setting (as divorced from mechanics), and an almost religious attempt to get the setting looking like FO through the eyballs to make me say that this is a solid attempt at reinventing a game for a changing market. It's Fallout. Combat is no less realistic than in the earlier games, and in fact the AI is much improved (though could stand for a great deal more improvement) in my opinion. The early games quickly fell into "attack-retreat-attack-retreat, repeat ad nauseum" Strategy consisted of grabbing a good piece of ground and holding it. I use vats to take a shot, grab some cover, take a shot, grab some cover. I quite frankly don't get the fuss over VATs, to be honest. No, it's not turn-based... and I think Bethesda could have taken the opportunity to make the best turn based combat system ever, that's another rant... but I've still died my share of times. I prefer to think of it "setting up a shot", and you are playing a "hero" of sorts, you are the focus of the universe after all... of course you're better than the average joe. No different than in the earlier games, as evidenced by your ability to even finish those games.

Music? Sometimes spot on, sometimes too "orchestral". I much prefer the dark, blaring doom of the early games.

I personally think there's too much stuff. Too much ammo for certain, way too much rad-away/rad-x. I'd be happier if the game made me suffer a bit.

I will admit that the feral ghouls freaked me the hell out when I first saw 'em running for me.

I think that the range system is flawed. Rifles are underranged, pistols & shotguns are over-ranged.

Not a big fan of stimpack cripple recoveries.

Should be able to kick drugs cold turkey... but make me work for it. Or, better yet, get me hooked on some Enclave-endorsed methadone-clinic crap. Make drugs something to actually worry about. Too easy to use, too easy to kick.

I still think that FP and turnbased combat can co-exist. But then again... if it was what most people wanted, it would happen, it hasn'y happened in a really, really long time. Many game designers name FO as the greatest CRPG ever, but none of them will touch a game like it, that says something.

 

[Eyenixon]

I personally think there's too much stuff. Too much ammo for certain, way too much rad-away/rad-x. I'd be happier if the game made me suffer a bit.

It does if you turn up the difficulty, the first two Fallouts were an absolute breeze for me after having come from the Goldbox games, so my second play-through of Fallout 1 had combat on the Brutal difficulty.
I didn't bother with anything lower than Very Hard on Fallout 3 the first time through and it's still easy if you prepare properly, however that includes scrounging ammo before you decide to go on an excavation to wherever.

Try that out, it won't solve all your problems but it certainly improves the challenge to a certain extent.

 

[BoisBrule]

thanks.

I never even thought of it.

and before I forget:

setting. They do a damn good job. Nice small touches. The skeleton in the tub with a toaster sticks out, but I've come across lots of them.

 

[Hroesvelgr]

I think that the range system is flawed. Rifles are underranged, pistols & shotguns are over-ranged.

I agree with pretty much everything you're saying, this just caught me as especially true. I picked up Charon from Underworld, and had him with me through most of the game. He's using the combat shotgun, but he has incredible accuracy and killing power from the same range that I do using a laser or sniper rifle. This makes him good to have around, but it gets annoying when he steals all your kills with his perfect shotgun headshots from twice the distance to the target you're shooting at.

 

[Eyenixon]

It's that same magic aim that prevents VATS from becoming cheat mode, if you want to beat large groups of enemies who can nail your skull from hundreds of feet away you have to resort to VATS.

 

[BoisBrule]

It's that same magic aim that prevents VATS from becoming cheat mode, if you want to beat large groups of enemies who can nail your skull from hundreds of feet away you have to resort to VATS

Actually, I just assumed that the enemy's aim was to balance out VATS. I've got killer aim with it, and it's meant to allow me time to set up shots while they remain oblivious, right? So... it's not such a stretch to think that the enemies might have pretty good aim as well.

 

[reticulate]

1) Poor graphics. If the graphics were just as F2, i would be content. Even today, they still look cool. Instead of it, they opted for the 3d-thing. But they made it crappy, choppy, lifeless... completely outdated.

Are you playing it on PC? What are your specs? It looks pretty damn good on the 360 in HD.

3) What the hell did they do to the character sheet? It's terrible! awful! almost disgusting! They destroyed the fallout 1 and 2 character sheet.
Tag skills? completely useless. May be you don't remember, but in the earlier fallouts you needed less skill points to develope the tagged skills than you needed for the non-tagged ones. Now it just adds some points to the skill... that's crap.
You also can't have more than 100 points in any skill. I use a sniper rifle, i have 100 in small guns, i have 8 in perception, and i also have perks that's supposed to enhance my accuracy with VATS, but still i only have 38% chance of hitting the torso of a guy that's 100mats away... wtf? it's a sniper rifle! i can't have more than 100 points in small guns! It's absurd!
I also noticed you choose a perk every time you level up instead of doing so every 3 levels like it was in the others. It is just boring. In the other games it was a "special" moment. You where going to choose a special hability! And you didn't knew what would you be able to choose, since you couldn't see all the perks, even if they were not available yet! It was pretty exciting. Now, at least till level 10, more than a half of the available perks consist in adding skill points to your character... that's not an special hability, i'm afraid, and you can see what's coming next and what do you have to do to be able to choose any perk... "no sir, i don't like it". Also, they are less than they were in F1 and F2.
Almost forgot! Where are the traits!? I want them back! And not as perks!
There are also some skills missing. That's simply sad.

K. I get that it's not the same as the character sheet from the first two. We already knew that ages ago. We also knew what the skills were, how perks worked and that they removed traits (I agree on this one - why?).

So while it might make you feel better to rant about it, you still bought the damn game knowing these things.

From what I can gather, they've interpreted the skills as being percentages. The funny thing about percentages is that they're out of a hundred. Unless you're min-maxing you shouldn't hit the ceiling on many skills so it's moot, and for me anything that reduces the cardigan-set from ruthlessly molesting a ruleset to feel awesome about themselves works for me.

Also, I'd say there's more perks by virtue of the fact you unlock a bunch every level, but I haven't actually sat down and counted them.

4) The interfaces simply stink. They didn't even bothered in making an image for every item (the inventory ones). I remember there were A LOT of items in F1 and F2. They had an image for every thing, and ALSO a DESCRIPTION. Why the hell didn't they put a description for the items? I makes me mad. Half the time i find myself carrying items i simply don't know what they do, or if they are useful or what, just because i don't know what is it! Image: pack of unrecognizable things.

Most items and weapons have different icons. Junk doesn't, that's true. Otherwise, you might note the Chinese Assault Rifle looks different from the standard one. That looks like someone spent some time working on them to me.

Description: None at all. It makes me MAD.

I agree that the lack of descriptions suck and I'm going to blame the fact that it's also been released on consoles.

The bartering interface is just poor. It's bad enough to keep me away of bartering with anyone unless it's absolutely needed, otherwise, i don't want to even see that screen. Why didn't they use categories like in oblivion? There are too many items! I want a gun, not cheese puffs, or scrap metal, or a fork, or a hat, I WANT A GUN!!!! LET ME SEE YOUR GUNS AND JUST YOUR GUNS, PLEEEEEASE!!!! Also, if you took something from the person you are bartering with and you regret of what you took, you have search your hoooooooooole inventory to find it and give it back or cancel the bartering sequence and start giving and taking again...

Uh, there are categories. Try reading the manual that came with the game.

The dialogue interface is as poor as the others. There only can be displayed 3 lines at a time, so you'll have to scroll. Luckily (?) the dialogues are so basic and oblivion-tupid that most of the times it's enough, but if it isn't... sometimes you don't notice there are more options, sometimes you get lost during the scrolling due to the poor 3 lines you can see at a time... that's another "mmmm... no sir. I don't like it".

Again, likely due to consoles. That said, I haven't found the conversations to be as bad as oblivion. They're certainly better than a lot of games. To be honest, despite the fact everyone has a hard-on for Mass Effect's writing there were bits that made me cringe.

I haven't cringed much in Fallout 3. I expressly avoided dealing with Burke for that exact reason. His voice acting sucks.

5) I wish i'm wrong, but... in these two days i couldn't find any mob. There is no mob in fallout 3? If that's true, then this game is lost. There's no fallout without a mob. If i come across a bethesda guy in the street, i will shoot his knees without hesitation, they don't deserve less than that. Also, there's no city like New Reno. There MUST be a city full of whores, drugs, casinos, mobs... again, this is not fallout.

Haven't seen one, but then again D.C. was never a haven of mob activity.

6) Where's the desert? You can't walk more than 100 mts without finding someone, and probabilities are 99 vs 1 that you will find raiders. That's as absurd as boring. They have nothing of value, they are too easy to kill, and their AI is simply sad.

Where exactly are you walking? I've walked long stretches without seeing friendlies or enemies. Of course, that can't hold a candle to just stopping anywhere on the map in Fallout 1/2 and seeing a whole lot of nothing, randomly generated.

7) NPC's are blind and deaf. You can shoot a magnum 44 and no one will hear it. They can see his fellow raider die just in front of them, and have no reaction. They had the technology to make NPCs moderately aware of what was happening around them back in the '90. There's no excuse for this.

The reaction I've usually seen when blowing the head off a raider is to have his buddies come at me. That's pretty much what I was expecting when I pulled the trigger.

NPC's don't seem to react much in towns, though.

9) There are... what? 5 different critters? Booooooooooriiiiiiiing.

There's more than five and the previous two didn't actually have a brilliant diversity of wildlife either, just more of everything.

I could continue to quote but I'm already bored. A lot of the stuff you've thrown out there is either dead wrong or suspiciously ignorant of how the game actually plays and looks.

 

[DOF_power]

>
^ Cities such as New Reno, Vault City, NCR, even San Francisco to a certain degree, in Fallout 2 and all their factions (like the mafia families), characters, quests, intrigue and some of their weapons where considered campy mistakes, outside the canon and lore of Fallout 1.

Both Interplay and Bethesda planed to rectify these mistakes and bring Van Buren/Fallout 3 to look more like Fallout 1 (no more Mafia and gangster cities like New Reno).

 

[DOF_power]

Dialogs are based of checks.

To have more/different/interesting dialog lines you need different character stats-skills-perks-karma; also you may need to learn something from a person (like rumors) and/or find some information (form a computer terminal, holodisk).

It can make a big difference sometimes.

 

[Touquet]

@ Shylock
I'm felling the same way...
I still enjoy the game at a low level but it seem it was made too quick!

The graphic are good even if I have some glitch with object that appear from nowhere even with my 8800 GT; canT’ see as far as I expected.
Character sheet and skill, yes what a mess. It seem they do not understand why the skill could go up to 200%... And why have tag skill
Getting perks every lvl just give skill bonus; for most of them – What the point in F2 I was excited to get Perk for the SPECIAL thing the give to my PC.
Where is the Bloody Mess trait!! I miss trait too, they give something special with the game play.
The item interface without the image/description even if the tiny description on the button but I give then one thing, they use categories this is a small improvement.
As for the dialog I just agree with you.
For the desert, the game stick to DC and the surrounding area… Small map, no state to travel to.
There is many critters, you just have to WALK and WALK to find then.
As for the Vampire…. What can I say…. Ok it look like more a cult but it’s don't have his plan in Fallout.

Edit: Where is the Bloody Mess trait!!-- oh! it's e perks now...

 

[Docnemo]

You can threaten, you can lie, you can steal, you can start fights, you can kill... what more were you considering?

Let me tell you right there - this is what they got wrong. Being able to do bad things is just that, being able to do bad things. It's not "moral decision".

The moral side of an action, I think, comes only in the manner by which you envision its consequences. Fallout 3 has branded things good, other things evil, the action in themselves are tagged with what is supposed to be morality. If everything was so obvious there would be no moral dilemnas.

That probably has nothing to do with the matter at hands but... I remember, in Fallout 2 I slept with a super mutant, for whatever reason. I really felt bad for my character when I discovered the sex toys in my inventory...