Kotaku Ranks The Fallouts

Tagaziel said:
valcik said:
Hm, I haven't played F3 yet and still the writting in FNV looks pretty good to me. There's a lot of interesting texts hidden in corporate terminals, most of the NPCs can talk with you about different topics, your companions have even their very own story-wise history and so on. Such a shame they ruined dialogues with that ridiculous [Science 60] skill check tags!

I'm with you. FNV has some great dialogue and some great NPCs. I especially like the characterization. Speaking with Caesar is a much different experience than speaking with Mr House. Good thing they carried that over from Fallout/Fallout 2.

Dialogue is one of the strong aspects of FNV, since it provides the glue that joins the world together, instead of making it a disjointed mess.
yeah, if now speaking with Caesar would have actually feelt like talking to a really intelligent leader and not some cheesy slaver villain and if House would not have been THAT ridiculous, it would have been even awesome. But yes, both characters are very different. So much for sure.
 
Talking with Caesar was even worse with those pseudo intellectual references that ofcourse must be in there.
 
Surf Solar said:
Talking with Caesar was even worse with those pseudo intellectual references that ofcourse must be in there.

I'm pretty sure that was intentional. The man is trying to justify mass murder, slavery, torture and rape with pseudo-intellectual drivel and hypocritical ''principles''. The only other intellectual in the game (Arcade) says he's completely full of shit, and I'm pretty sure anyone with even a cursory knowledge of political philosophy is supposed to see through his BS. I mean, Hegelian dialectics? Come on now. This has been proven to be brain fart before the man was a corpse.

House also makes a relatively shaky case, but he's talking to what he thinks is an enforcer, and he's a rather to-the-point guy too. It's understandable he doesn't go at lenghts on what his goals/motivations are. He expects the Courier to take his orders because he's his employee; a more competent employee than most, but an employee still. This is completely in character and bites him in the ass if you betray him. Notice how Ceasar is more than happy to lay down his bullshit at his audience, while House demonstrates clear impatience at the player's questions.

That's how I see it anyway. But I cannot imagine myself giving Obsidian writers, of all things, too much credit.

mentioned this earlier. It's a mistake to assume that good writing means "long writing". In fact one has nothing to do with the other, and games are served very well by having compact dialogue which carries a lot of information in it.

I was exagerating; the point is, Fallout never had dialog like Mass Effect or DA2 where most responses have a clear tone. Non-verbal dialog more or less requires the responses to be fairly neutral in tone unless you give a clear indicator of what the PC is talking about (hence, skill checks). I don't see a big difference between New Vegas and Fallout 1 on that front, not enough to fret about anyway.

I think you may want to look at Deus Ex: Human Revolution for a system you would like. It's not an RPG, but the dialog system is very well crafted. I won't go at lenght, but it does a good job of introducing tone and flavor to dialog without overdoing it ala Baldur's Gate/Mass Effect. And the important cnversation ''battles'' are just so awesome.
 
Ilosar said:
I was exagerating; the point is, Fallout never had dialog like Mass Effect or DA2 where most responses have a clear tone. Non-verbal dialog more or less requires the responses to be fairly neutral in tone unless you give a clear indicator of what the PC is talking about (hence, skill checks). I don't see a big difference between New Vegas and Fallout 1 on that front, not enough to fret about anyway.

Mass Effect was bipolar, Fallout1 wasn't bipolar, and Fallout:NV is on thorazine.

I think you may want to look at Deus Ex: Human Revolution for a system you would like. It's not an RPG, but the dialog system is very well crafted. I won't go at lenght, but it does a good job of introducing tone and flavor to dialog without overdoing it ala Baldur's Gate/Mass Effect. And the important cnversation ''battles'' are just so awesome.

Deus EX:HR had so much wrong with it that a dialogue system alone wouldn't be enough to redeem it. I regret buying it on release.
 
Man, your life must suck. Apparently there are no good games anymore.
 
When it comes to RPGs, it is true, I don't care for most of them.

Fortunately, there are more genres than RPG out there. I've been clocking hours in Tribes:Ascend since it was in beta, and am pretty far through Dead Space 2, but this isn't the thread to discuss those, so I don't.
 
you're more cynical about games then old me.

I like that.

Ilosar said:
Surf Solar said:
Talking with Caesar was even worse with those pseudo intellectual references that ofcourse must be in there.

I'm pretty sure that was intentional. The man is trying to justify mass murder, slavery, torture and rape with pseudo-intellectual drivel and hypocritical ''principles''. The only other intellectual in the game (Arcade) says he's completely full of shit, and I'm pretty sure anyone with even a cursory knowledge of political philosophy is supposed to see through his BS. I mean, Hegelian dialectics? Come on now. This has been proven to be brain fart before the man was a corpse.
as far as the game goes, Ceaser Salad was still a rather weak character, a huge letdown. Not to mention the whole situation feelt rather ... silly to me. The overdone roman theme, which I believe, simply has no place like that in Fallout, not as "major" part of the game. Its obvious that the NCR got the most attention during development, it feels almost like they somewhat lost their steam with the legion, either runing out of time or what ever.

VEGAS IS A GOOD GAME!!!11 Before people get the idea I would only bash the game.

But even Vegas has quite a lot of places and situations that simply brake the immersion. At leats for me. Like the boomers and their proxomity to Vegas and all the other factions. Even the Boomers cant have that much firepower to keep people away for such long. Particularly as the NPC rather easily can get trough ... Caesar is rather comical as character (but not in a good way ...) and that you go down there and start the robot army (eventually depending on your choice) was probably the most stupid thing ever. Hey! We hate technology! so uh! go down there and destroy what ever might be there! We hear loud noices! So we guess you did it!

No Fallout game is probably free from flaws, hell if you compare F1 with Wasteland, I am sure there are things Wasteland 1 did better. Though F1 was the first Fallout game, so I think it should get somewhat a bonus here. F2 and Vegas, while a lot better then other Fallout titles, have quite a few flaws, with the difference that F2 has done the world better then Vegas, mainly because Vegas feels rather really like a Sandbox then playing inside a "post apoc world". F2 gave you enough room to use your own imagination. Vegas was simply to small in my eyes.
 
Crni Vuk said:
you're more cynical about games then old me.

I like that.

Ilosar said:
Surf Solar said:
Talking with Caesar was even worse with those pseudo intellectual references that ofcourse must be in there.

I'm pretty sure that was intentional. The man is trying to justify mass murder, slavery, torture and rape with pseudo-intellectual drivel and hypocritical ''principles''. The only other intellectual in the game (Arcade) says he's completely full of shit, and I'm pretty sure anyone with even a cursory knowledge of political philosophy is supposed to see through his BS. I mean, Hegelian dialectics? Come on now. This has been proven to be brain fart before the man was a corpse.
as far as the game goes, Ceaser Salad was still a rather weak character, a huge letdown. Not to mention the whole situation feelt rather ... silly to me. The overdone roman theme, which I believe, simply has no place like that in Fallout, not as "major" part of the game. Its obvious that the NCR got the most attention during development, it feels almost like they somewhat lost their steam with the legion, either runing out of time or what ever.

VEGAS IS A GOOD GAME!!!11 Before people get the idea I would only bash the game.

But even Vegas has quite a lot of places and situations that simply brake the immersion. At leats for me. Like the boomers and their proxomity to Vegas and all the other factions. Even the Boomers cant have that much firepower to keep people away for such long. Particularly as the NPC rather easily can get trough ... Caesar is rather comical as character (but not in a good way ...) and that you go down there and start the robot army (eventually depending on your choice) was probably the most stupid thing ever. Hey! We hate technology! so uh! go down there and destroy what ever might be there! We hear loud noices! So we guess you did it!

No Fallout game is probably free from flaws, hell if you compare F1 with Wasteland, I am sure there are things Wasteland 1 did better. Though F1 was the first Fallout game, so I think it should get somewhat a bonus here. F2 and Vegas, while a lot better then other Fallout titles, have quite a few flaws, with the difference that F2 has done the world better then Vegas, mainly because Vegas feels rather really like a Sandbox then playing inside a "post apoc world". F2 gave you enough room to use your own imagination. Vegas was simply to small in my eyes.

There's a point where cynism becomes unpleasability if you ask me, but I digress.

I agree that the roman theme was a bit overdone, and the Boomers were slightly silly, but Fallout 2 was way worse. Vault City and it's incredibly stuck-up morons? ''tribals'' behaving like stereotypical Native Americans? Cheesy old New Reno? Polite talking Deathclaws? San Francisco and it's pseudo-scientologists, roaming punks and funny cartoony Chinese people? The Enclave, mash up of the worst of the US with damn nazis? New Vegas is pretty tame compared to that, albeit it recycles some themes admitedly.
 
Vault City, I actually liked (as a location-- it was fun and interesting, no matter how much I wanted to scour the citizens and turn the place over to the servants and NCR). In their shelteredness, they had very understandable reason to think they were better than everyone else and to want to protect the kernal of civilization they had going. The idea of a closed community that manages to get a leg-up through protection from the apocalypse or a technological windfall is a staple of post-apocalyptica, and I think it was done well here.

Tribals make sense too, in a way, but as you say, it would have been a lot better if some thought had been given to their societal development rather than just plugging them into a pre-made stereotype. The khans from NV were a better example, though not perfect.

Everything else, I think you hit on the head. (It pains me to admit it, as I've always had a soft-spot for the tanker vagrants, but there it is).
 
Crni Vuk said:
as far as the game goes, Ceaser Salad was still a rather weak character, a huge letdown. Not to mention the whole situation feelt rather ... silly to me.
IMO set Legion as a rival of NCR is the most biggest flaw of NV.
they was intended to be rival of Daughters of Hecate who are kind of amazon tribe. for rival of NCR, they should set other reasonable faction to balance. Caesar's legion isn't reasonable enough to be rival of NCR I think.

No Fallout game is probably free from flaws, hell if you compare F1 with Wasteland, I am sure there are things Wasteland 1 did better. Though F1 was the first Fallout game, so I think it should get somewhat a bonus here. F2 and Vegas, while a lot better then other Fallout titles, have quite a few flaws, with the difference that F2 has done the world better then Vegas, mainly because Vegas feels rather really like a Sandbox then playing inside a "post apoc world". F2 gave you enough room to use your own imagination. Vegas was simply to small in my eyes.
:clap:
 
"Your life must suck".

Life sucks. All life.

There are no perfect games, no perfect friends, no perfect women, no perfect movies or books or music (well, apart from Dream Theater, of course) or anything.

There is no perfect in life.

All we're left with is stuff that we choose to either bitch about for not being perfect or bear with and either enjoy or ignore.

I honestly don't see how it's any better to enjoy an imperfect thing than to bitch about it.

Or the other way around for that matter.
 
If it's your hobby to bitch about everything, go for it. Me personally, I just find it annoying.
 
I think a much more valid term is criticism. That is in itself educational, fun and offers the opportunity for improvement.

Personally I would for example love to have a mod that changes Caesar's Legion to be romans in name only. Give them some freaking pants, and lose the whole idea that giving people spears rather than guns and taking away proper healthcare equals anything positive.
 
Akratus said:
I think a much more valid term is criticism. That is in itself educational, fun and offers the opportunity for improvement.

Personally I would for example love to have a mod that changes Caesar's Legion to be romans in name only. Give them some freaking pants, and lose the whole idea that giving people spears rather than guns and taking away proper healthcare equals anything positive.

This. If it would be for that, I'd be much more comfortable with the legion rather than the clown show that there is now. How are they supposed to be "menacing" to other people when they dress as if they were out of the carnival
 
Surf Solar said:
This. If it would be for that, I'd be much more comfortable with the legion rather than the clown show that there is now. How are they supposed to be "menacing" to other people when they dress as if they were out of the carnival

Don't you dare mock the football equipment and skirt of doom, wastrel!
 
I am sure this football equipment looked awesome in concept arts and as idea. I can imagine it, really. Particularly as it gives you this kind of feeling you get with Mad Max 2, where you see all the raiders in self made clothes.

The problem with the Legion however is, that all their soldiers look the same, while I believe that is alright for the NCR, it simply doesn't look as convincing with the Legion, I mean did they found some kind of factory which made clothes for football players? Not to mention the engine Obsidian had to use ... really looks awful in my eyes. As far as 3D engines goes. Textures, animations, its simply awful.
 
Legion should've used the pelts of the mutated animals of the Wasteland for their uniforms. I have the Caesar's New Regime Mod so I don't care about how they look anymore.
 
Lexx said:
If it's your hobby to bitch about everything, go for it. Me personally, I just find it annoying.
What if I told you I find it annoying to tolerate mediocrity?
 
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