MTV Multiplayer previews Fallout 3

Brother None

Brother None

This ghoul has seen it all
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MTV Multiplayer is next to preview Fallout 3 based on 4 hours hands-on time.<blockquote>I had gone into my “Fallout 3″ demo intending to play it the same way I did “Fable II.” Because I’m almost always a good guy when I play games at home, I wanted to play “Fallout 3″ as a jerk. But because Bethesda blocked us from the main quest, I found being a bad guy in the early going meant I couldn’t find many missions. Reluctantly, I decided to help the citizens of Megaton. In the back of my mind, though, I wanted to turn on their nuclear bomb and blow the city to smithereens.

Many missions in “Fallout 3″ ensure you’ll be doing a fair bit of open-world wandering. The compass in the corner of the screen not only points out the direction of your primary objective, but sights to see along the way. If you follow the compass’ hints, you’ll be sidetracked pretty easily, discovering supermarkets, baseball fields, movie theaters and more. You gain experience for discovering landmarks, so there’s a good incentive to explore as much of the “Fallout 3″ landscape as possible.</blockquote>Thanks Incognito.
 
Brother None said:
...If you follow the compass’ hints, you’ll be sidetracked pretty easily, discovering supermarkets, baseball fields, movie theaters and more. You gain experience for discovering landmarks, so there’s a good incentive to explore as much of the “Fallout 3″ landscape as possible.
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Well done; you've followed an arrow on a compass. Have some tasty XP... Oh dear.

Who need incentive to explore? What's the alternative, sit down in the middle of the wastes?

Supermarkets, baseball fields, and so on, fine, but don't hold my hand all the way there - whatever happened to isolation?
 
well not to much new in there , and yeah go follow that compass hint thing is just annoying , i swear people playing game gets dumber and dumber each day and need to be spoonfed what to do , seeing we only 20 ish days from release im guessing the media monster is well fed of the news about fallout3 , guessing last week before release the monster comes alive again

Well back to lurking
 
lol...well...it was a funky preview, but sort of entertaining in the way that I thought the previewer was going to jump out of the nearest window instead of make a decision. :D Sweating...clammy hands...lol...

Anyway... In response to the last posts; I wonder what those compass hints really look like? Maybe they are more like marks on a radar, cause I can't imagine a big arrow for every random thing. But, although I tend to agree about hand holding; as far as finding locations, the original Fallouts basically had a big green circle around most of the map locations. It was what was within those areas you had to search for yourself. Just like 'the dungeons'. Sure they may tell you "dungeon here!" but once you get inside, there may not be anything tell you where the magical treasu...uh...metal locker is located. The previous previewers previewing seemed to be going in fairly blind. So, hopefully, it will just be the compass pointing out a general area like a town (once you're close to it) and not every item within.
 
This big circle was so big because:
a) locations like The Hub or Junktown are hard to miss
b) it would be bad game design if you would have to click at point of 1mm x 1mm size
Besides it wasn't that big.
Anyway, it doesn't change the fact that arrow telling you were to go is stupid.
 
Yeah, again, I'd just have to see what it really looks like and to what extent it covers. As in: does it tell you EVERY little location of interest or only major ones. Still, I'll stick with what I said about the general locale point. I don't mind if they say "here's a town" or "here are bombed out ruins", as long as they don't tell you everything within that area. That's not so bad. (at least to me)

And I didn't articulate it, but your right about having to search the map blindly in the originals. Wouldn't that have been fun? :P :)

"You have found...Desert!" ... "You have found...Desert!"

EDIT: I will say that I wouldn't be too annoyed if the 'blips' showed up once you were close to a location, (that's similar to the originals) cause there might be certain areas, like an entrance to a subway, which might be very hard to find otherwise. We've seen how much clutter is in certain areas of the new world, and we're also not sure just how big this world is. (I'm not blindly defending BTW, we just haven't played it yet)
 
Goral said:
This big circle was so big because:
a) locations like The Hub or Junktown are hard to miss
b) it would be bad game design if you would have to click at point of 1mm x 1mm size
Besides it wasn't that big.
Anyway, it doesn't change the fact that arrow telling you were to go is stupid.
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No, this is exactly the kind of attitude that irritates me on this forum. Complaining about the quest compass, but saying it is ok for the big circles in the original games is as hypocritical as it gets. They operate exactly the same way. They give you the point on your pipboy which then leads you to the location in both instances.

The comparable way to not have the compass in the originals would have been to say, from vault city go southwest and you will find new reno, then when you bumped into New Reno the green circle was there, but it wasn't present on your map until you found it. Seriously, this is not a big break...heck it isn't even a break at all, it is encorporating the pipboy map location into 3D FPS play vs. map travel as was present in the originals.


I could be mistaken, but you received experience for finding locations in the originals as well I believe.

Also, on the isolation issue, you aren't going to feel the isolation in this game like previous ones, because rather then running around the entire west coast, you are running around LA Boneyard, just a little less civilized....

Guess I will read the preview now :)
 
Gothic 3 was fine without a handholding compass, you had to find everything based on npc descriptions. This made it much more interesting to explore the world, never knowing what you might discover.
 
Texas Renegade said:
No, this is exactly the kind of attitude that irritates me on this forum. Complaining about the quest compass, but saying it is ok for the big circles in the original games is as hypocritical as it gets. They operate exactly the same way. They give you the point on your pipboy which then leads you to the location in both instances.
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No they don't, and if you had gone on to read the other posts rather than add your angry one you would have noted this point has been covered.

What you're thinking of as being identical is if Fallout would have showed you the location of cities right from the off-set: if you did not need to explore and uncover fog-of-war to uncover locations. Conceptually, the Fallout maps are clear-cut: they show you the location of something your character can already see, when he is close enough to uncover the location.

Compass markers are conceptually different, but how different exactly depends on the implementation. It sounds like Fallout 3 just points you to POIs, not just big locations, but anything of interest, any "dungeon" or baseball field. You can only argue that isn't conceptually different if your head is stuck a foot up your ass.
 
No, this is exactly the kind of attitude that irritates me on this forum. Complaining about the quest compass, but saying it is ok for the big circles in the original games is as hypocritical as it gets. They operate exactly the same way. They give you the point on your pipboy which then leads you to the location in both instances.
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Did you get XP for discovering the big circles?
 
In Oblivion, POI only appeared on your compass once you were near them. Assuming they use the same system I don't see how this differs from the green circles appearing in FO1 or 2. I would think it unlikely that every POI would be highlighted on your compass from the outset of the game. It would be far to cluttered and unreadable.
 
Assuming they use the same system I don't see how this differs from the green circles appearing in FO1 or 2.
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The difference is that green circles in FO1 and 2 were for towns and other locations big enough to notice from afar, and it was simply assumed that you did see them from where you were, not places like a baseball field. And you didn't get XP for being directed to them.
 
Were into speculation again, but what has been previously said, it does seem that they will be using the same Fog of War technique that was used in previous Fallouts. Once you are near that location, I imagine (as I will state once again :P ) that is when the 'blips' show up. So...even when talking about a baseball field, we don't know whether you see it on your radar from 100 feet away or a mile. It may just as well be fairly realistic.
 
Ausir said:
Assuming they use the same system I don't see how this differs from the green circles appearing in FO1 or 2.
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The difference is that green circles in FO1 and 2 were for towns and other locations big enough to notice from afar, and it was simply assumed that you did see them from where you were, not places like a baseball field. And you didn't get XP for being directed to them.
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True. However the area involved in FO3 is on a much smaller scale so maybe its relative. I don't know I havent made my mind up on this one yet. It would be nice to think that there are some places that dont show up at all. I think putting ever hut/shack/cave on the compass would be a little too much. As for the XP, yeah thats differrent as are many things.
 
Why are the defenders of Bethesda always so intentionally obtuse?

The green circles in Fallout showed up in two situations:

1: You were physically close enough to a city to see it.
2: Someone gave you the coords and you entered them in your pip boy.

That is not the same type of system as a "quest compass" at all. You didn't have an arrow pointing you towards every single landmark from cities to baseball fields.

Having towns marked on a map, and having a GTA style mission compass are two different things, so stop trying to act like this isn't an obvious point. The only way you could honestly think they're the same is if you didn't really play Fallout 1 and 2...
 
Beelzebud said:
Why are the defenders of Bethesda always so intentionally obtuse?

The green circles in Fallout showed up in two situations:

1: You were physically close enough to a city to see it.
2: Someone gave you the coords and you entered them in your pip boy.

That is not the same type of system as a "quest compass" at all. You didn't have an arrow pointing you towards every single landmark from cities to baseball fields.

Having towns marked on a map, and having a GTA style mission compass are two different things, so stop trying to act like this isn't an obvious point. The only way you could honestly think they're the same is if you didn't really play Fallout 1 and 2...
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An obvious point that leads back to what? That every element in the previous games must be present and correct in exactly the same form in the new one. This is old, and it aint going to happen for better or for worse. As for the comment ' The only way you could honestly think they're the same is if you didn't really play Fallout 1 and 2'.......please. Someone has a differrent view to you and all you can do is pull crap like that? Very weak and you know it.
 
First off, my post wasn't angry. It was just a post.

Secondly, I was referring to the part dealing with the quest compass pointing you out to an objective. You don't start the game off with all the cities and objectives already on it. The previews have all stated that the only thing on the map quest wise when they start is Megaton which is right near the vault.

If it points out things that you can't see on the map, that is different I agree. My interpretation of it though was referring to it pointing out your objective of where you are trying to go. If it points you to every little thing in a manner that you couldn't possibly know they were there really doesn't make any kind of sense I agree. However, my post was simply regarding the idea that putting destinations on the compass wasn't different.

Thanks for letting me know that my head is up my ass though.

No, I don't believe you got experience for finding the circles, however, I do believe you recieved experience for finding some of the special encounters and such. Plus, I want to say that a few of the cities, you did get XP--such as the Sierra army depot, golgotha, Military Base, and the drug place... can't remember the name at the moment.

How the guy wasn't able to figure out how to blow up megaton really leads me to question his intelligence....
 
@Beelzebud: I don't really know who your comment was directed to, but I personally wasn't talking about a 'quest compass'. I know what you're talking about, as you stated, like in GTA. Of course if you take a mission, or whatever, and a huge marker/arrow pops up, that's a major hand holding annoyance (in most cases) and in no way similar to FO1 or 2. But...when talking about how/when blips show up on your map, that's a different thing, and what I was pointing out specifically.

This isn't a derogatory statement toward you, but I just get tired of the amount of speculation, negative or otherwise that comes out on something that hasn't even been seen yet, or mentioned, by anyone other than, in this case, a previewer who wasn't even that interested in the game in the first place. I think it's good that we all get involved in discussions and have opinions, but like many other things that have been discussed on this board, it once again is about something we can't judge for ourselves. Optimists and pessimists alike can both be end up being right or wrong. Most of my statements on such things are in an attempt to prevent an all out bashing of something no one has proof of. Once the game is out, or a review has covered it completely, and we see it finally for what it is, then I believe that is when someone should form a final opinion. That being said though, I usually don't mind some amount of speculation, I just hate over hype or over destruction as a whole.
 
Beelzebud said:
Why are the defenders of Bethesda always so intentionally obtuse?

The green circles in Fallout showed up in two situations:

1: You were physically close enough to a city to see it.
2: Someone gave you the coords and you entered them in your pip boy.

That is not the same type of system as a "quest compass" at all. You didn't have an arrow pointing you towards every single landmark from cities to baseball fields.

Having towns marked on a map, and having a GTA style mission compass are two different things, so stop trying to act like this isn't an obvious point. The only way you could honestly think they're the same is if you didn't really play Fallout 1 and 2...
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Why is arguing a point make a bethesda defender.....I could care less about the company.

I was merely arguing what you said in your 2nd point--If someone gives you the coordinates for the location, I don't see how it being on your compass is any different then it being on the map.

I also said if it is poping up random locations you would have no way of knowing are there, then I agree it is being poorly implemented.
 
squinty said:
An obvious point that leads back to what? That every element in the previous games must be present and correct in exactly the same form in the new one. This is old, and it aint going to happen for better or for worse.
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So, if it is worse, people shouldn't say that they think so?

My main objection is to the entire idea that one needs to encouraged to explore, and especially if that requires being led to every minor location and then being given a big old XP pat on the head...

Finding a rusting old basketball hoop shouldn't be worthy of XP.

Having said that, exactly what need is there for a quest compass? On a world map, there is every reason to show people that they are close to a location which could be seen by their character. It simply wouldn't work otherwise. In the open world of Fallout 3 it should be possible to explore using ingame senses, rather than some spooky knowledge.

squinty said:
Very weak and you know it.
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Equally as weak as telling people to get over it...
 
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