New dev diary on Fallout 3 site

[ashley52]

When I say it's "steampunk-ish", I don't mean it looks like the robots are driven by steam, it looks like it unnecessarily incorporates elements from steampunk ART that don't necessarily fit the art of Fallout.

Look at, for instance, this reimagining of Darth Vader in steampunk. What is it that makes it steampunk? There is no steam-driven mechanic in there, for sure. There are a few elements of clock mechanics that help, but there's more.

But a few more important things:
- It has a visible framework of metal, so that you can see parts of its "inner workings" visible
- The Vader image is fairly clean, for Steampunk, but another consequence is that it has odd bits and ends, either in pipes or pistons, that do not have a clear purpose (compare to typically more detailed machinery in steampunk).

Now, for your enjoyment, please take the Fallout 3 robots and put them alongside this Van Buren robot concept.

What does Van Buren do right here that Adam does wrong?

- You do not get to see any of the robot's inner mechanics.
- The robot is clean, polished (not in the literal sense, but in design), because it's the 50's. World of the future design is clean, remember that.
- The robot does not have a single bit or end that looks like it doesn't have a function.

Take Adam's piece, look at the left robot. Look at the lower body of the top right Brainbot. Look at the robot seen in the background to the left of Brainbot.

I see bits and ends on the outside. I see visible internal mechanics. I see design that is a-typical of World of the Future design, including a propensity for human anatomy.

Now posting here, I decided to sum that all up as "Steampunk-ish", convinced that all of NMA's readers would be intelligent enough to gather what I meant. Apparently I thought wrong. You can continue to hammer on the semantics of the term steampunk, or realize I'm talking about an artistic shift that shares elements with steampunk art and can thus be described by that word.

It's not an exact term, I never meant that you could put a steampunk art next to it and say "hey this looks exactly the same", I meant that design has gone from what we know of World of the Future and inched towards steampunk.

I agree totally with this. I thought the same thing when I first saw the concept art.

Look, I might not have been accurate with who was the director for Steamboy, and Nausica may not have been a post-apocalyptic... I forget because I saw them a while back... most of them within the same week.. so I find it hard to differentiate, but people should get my gist. As described by Brother None... there is a style to steampunk art.. irrespective of the definition of the term. It doesnt have to have steam coming out of it...

The steampunk art might even well be more accurate of a post-apocalyptic scene, but its not fallout.

 

[terebikun]

Are you going to try to push this point of "you guys can't agree amongst yourselves!" much further? It's getting old. We're individuals, obviously we use different basis of comparisons and arguments. That doesn't mean we disagree on what the mutants look like, even if we use different language.

Actually I'm pushing the point that the Behemoths don't look any more like orcs than the old guys do, while making fun of the previous arguments here involving the Hulk and the Peter Jackson orcs/Uruk-Hai.

If you have a linguistics degree, you should have realised my argument isn't actually in semantics. The difference between using the style of the originals or the style of Return to Castle Wolfenstein isn't semantics, it's dichotomic, because RtCW is completely unrelated to Fallout.

Arguing that deviation is different from evolution is a semantic argument. Sorry. And yes, it's dichotomic, but so are any two things compared. Yes, RtCW is completely unrelated to Fallout, but that does that mean the Behemoth design isn't allowed to look kind of like their mutants? Every fantasy game on the planet has you fighting rats at the beginning, and they're supposed to be unrelated to Fallout.

Nope. Evolution is taking something in the series and changing it over the same lines. If I change the camera angle in GTA, it doesn't matter since viewpoint is only used to support the gameplay. Same thing goes for Fallout, though turn-based simply runs better in bird's eye view.

If I take one series, and add an element from an unrelated series, like implementing RtCW's Supersoldiers into Fallout, that does not fit any definition of evolution.

I've been arguing for awhile now that the Behemoth design is very similar in concept to the old mutants, so that would be taking something in the series and changing it over the same lines. Here's a better GTA analogy that fits what I'm trying to say: They change cities and time periods almost every game, so the look of it and the general ambiance is different, but because it's always a busy, crime-ridden environment offering the same experience as the previous game plus more, built on the same concepts, it is evolving.

They didn't literally take RtCW's Supersoldiers and put them into Fallout, all they've done is alter the art of the mutants a bit, and according to you they now look like the Supersoldiers. Now I am going to go actually look up a screenshot of these guys, because I didn't make it far enough in the game to ever see them.

'fraid you're misinformed. The Behemoth is one type of supermutant, the extra-big one, the rest are called supermutants. All explanations so far (we've had a few in previews/interviews) is that supermutants came from FEV, so all the back-story we have now points to them being the same supermutants. But it's possible the changes will be explained as "they're different kinds".

Please note that since you mentioned it was the design of the Behemoth, I've been referring to it as a Behemoth design and not as a supermutant design.

Link?

I don't see your point there, by the way.

Rahungry's post on page 6 of the thread. Their point being, that the Uruk-Hai-inspired Behemoth doesn't just look like a "bigger human", and that's exactly the problem a lot of people are having with the Behemoth look.

Why does everyone suddenly claim to be an expert? I don't care if you just studied anatomy or linguistics, appeal to authority is a logical fallacy and certainly doesn't work when you're trying to claim it yourself.

I didn't claim to be an expert, nor did I make an appeal to authority. I simply mentioned that the ensuing argument over semantics would be pointless, and I know it from a great deal of personal experience. Were we arguing about semantics being a waste of time it could be seen as an appeal to authority, but we weren't.

 

[Bad_Karma]

I spend a lot of time working on anatomy and I think they a close enough build to be called faithful. The fact that you think that a minor change in posture is enough to make this a wild deviation is exactly why no one outside this little circle jerk gives a shit about what you think about fallout.

Right posture dosen't matter O_O And you claim to know something about anatomy? Let me guess you only mean 'artistic anatomy', and even then you haven't looked far into it, like animations did you? No offence meant, but you miss a big point.
It's damn important for animation. If you watch King Kong Two and a half hours walking upright, you might swear about how stupid the makers were, because apes don't walk that often upright.
You need certain animations and therefore also the posture, that mirror the substance of the character.
And therefore it's a difference if we look on a lone picture, or an a full sequence.
The Supermutant Fallout 1 sequence looks like: hunchback standing, hunchback walking, hunchback firing, hunchback running (more upright, but with visuable flaws) and hunchback fighting.
The Fallout 3 sequences (or pictures) looked until now like:
upright standing, upright walking, upright... upright....
And that's the same difference as between a good and a bad King Kong.
Also you used a picture with not many details (facial details) to compare to a more or less normal shot, while there were more detailed ones.
It easy to say 'Hey that's a Plesiosaur' when looking on a blurred 'Nessie'-pic, but it's harder when you got some unblurred picture of a swimming dog, isn't it?

So it's not really anatomy alone, but also about implied animations and therefore differences in how you feel about the character.

I won't address the rest, as i simply don't care enough about this differences....
I'm more waiting toward first infos about Quests and so on

 

[Sander]

Actually I'm pushing the point that the Behemoths don't look any more like orcs than the old guys do, while making fun of the previous arguments here involving the Hulk and the Peter Jackson orcs/Uruk-Hai.

The Behemoth is not the same as the regular Fallout 3 supermutant. In fact, from what we've seen, it seems likely he's a sort of unique mini-boss.

So all your points regarding the Behemoth being similar to Super Mutant design are pretty irrelevant - because the Behemoth is *not* the same as the original Super Mutants.

 

[whirlingdervish]

I spend a lot of time working on anatomy and I think they a close enough build to be called faithful. The fact that you think that a minor change in posture is enough to make this a wild deviation is exactly why no one outside this little circle jerk gives a shit about what you think about fallout.

While you're wasting your breath, and waiting for people to snap up your bait, feel free to try to convince any sane and intelligent human that there's no difference between the opinions that the T-rex was a bipedal lizard that stood erect like a person and the differing one that says it spent it's days leaning forward like a running bird and balancing with it's tail.

 

[Brother None]

Actually I'm pushing the point that the Behemoths don't look any more like orcs than the old guys do, while making fun of the previous arguments here involving the Hulk and the Peter Jackson orcs/Uruk-Hai.

Oh, well, you stand on your rights there. But quite frankly, in that case all you're doing is picking on people's choice of words. There seems to be a lot of that. If that's honestly the only counter-arguments people can come up with, complaining about the Hulk/orc-analogies, they haven't got a leg to stand on. On either side. Hence this messy argument.

Arguing that deviation is different from evolution is a semantic argument. Sorry.

Well, what can I say?

No it isn't.

Well, ok, it is in as far as the discussion on the meaning of any word is - by definition - semantics, but the debate on the differentiation between evolution and revolution, or evolution and deviation, is a clear one if you manage to get around that semantics debate. Which is easy for anyone not out to just prove himself.

And yes, it's dichotomic, but so are any two things compared.

Yes, RtCW is completely unrelated to Fallout, but that does that mean the Behemoth design isn't allowed to look kind of like their mutants?

The Behemoth isn't the problem. I personally like the Behemoth as an exception (well, not a lot, but somewhat, I find his role as end-boss somewhat stupid), especially if his backstory is that he's a BuffOut junkie tossed into the Vats or something.

It's the other mutants that are the point.

Every fantasy game on the planet has you fighting rats at the beginning, and they're supposed to be unrelated to Fallout.

Eh? I never said anything from any other game is impossible to use in Fallout. Giant rats and giant animals of any kind could fit because of the "Them!"-relation Fallout has. It doesn't matter if they're also adapted otherwhere, as they also fit Fallout lore. RTcW, however, is a mutant WW II story, I doubt you can find anything in there that fits Fallout lore.

I've been arguing for awhile now that the Behemoth design is very similar in concept to the old mutants

Ok, seriously, stop saying Behemoth design.

This is the Behemoth:


This is the guy we're actually talking about:

Here's a better GTA analogy that fits what I'm trying to say: They change cities and time periods almost every game, so the look of it and the general ambiance is different, but because it's always a busy, crime-ridden environment offering the same experience as the previous game plus more, built on the same concepts, it is evolving.

Actually, that analogy would fit with the change of location Bethesda picked, which some people grumbled about but was generally accepted. The analogy would fit that because it's actually the same thing

They didn't literally take RtCW's Supersoldiers and put them into Fallout, all they've done is alter the art of the mutants a bit, and according to you they now look like the Supersoldiers.

It is another example, and if you're honestly contemplating boiling up another choice-of-words argument, I request you stop now.

I say Supersoldiers because the Fallout 3 mutants as I saw them in the demo are closer to said soldiers than they are to Fallout 1 mutants. The Fallout 3 mutants aren't identical to either, but definitely close to Supersoldiers.

I can do little to show this with screenshots, other than this old piece by Tannhauser

Please note that since you mentioned it was the design of the Behemoth, I've been referring to it as a Behemoth design and not as a supermutant design.

What? I mentioned once that the pieces you pointed out to look like the Behemoth and not the supermutants, and have repeated multiple times since then that this debate is about the normal supermutants.

Are you being purposefully obtuse? In either case, you can drop the Behemoth-facade now. He's not the point of contention.

Rahungry's post on page 6 of the thread. Their point being, that the Uruk-Hai-inspired Behemoth doesn't just look like a "bigger human", and that's exactly the problem a lot of people are having with the Behemoth look.

No one was talking about the Behemoth. Please tell me where anyone made the example comparing the Behemoth to orcs.

 

[UniversalWolf]

Do we have any info on whether FINO supermutants-INO have multiple facial expressions? Those perma-snarls-of-rage seem to be ubiquitous. And annoying.

 

[whirlingdervish]

I wouldn't be surprised if they're constantly making a Nemesis style toothy sneer, every time you see them.

That's how you can tell they don't like you, if the rockets and bullets flying at you don't tip you off. We know they can't elucidate an actual reason for their dislike, due to their lack of speech.

Immersion FTW!

 

[Bernard Bumner]

Things that changed (and again, I'm talking in Fallout 3, not necessarily concept arts):
- Facial features: big jowels, small cranium, small eyes and nose, face held up by straps. All gone.
- Stance: the hunched look seen most clearly in the standing sprite in the supermutant walking down the hall (top left and right) is not in the game.
- Proportions: look at the arms of the supermutant lying down and tell me those aren't disproportionate. Also look at the small head versus big body proportions.

Without wanting to try to make myself sound like an expert, the worst thing about losing those elements of the design is that they - deliberately or not - tie in very nicely with the science behind the Super Mutants.

The whole point of the process of Super Mutant creation is that it is more like an accelerated and exaggerated form of body building than literally building a body. The main increase in tissue mass is in skeletal muscle (Subject A in Vree's Experiment holodisk has a muscle mass of 77%, and bone mass of 10%, compared to approximately 45% and 15% for a normal healthy adult male).

From the talking heads and sprites, we can see that both the pectorals and sternocleidomastoids (which pass down the sides of the neck) are overdeveloped, which also happens to associated with a condition known as functional kyphosis (or a hunchback, sometimes seen in body builders). Additonally, overgrowth of the sternocleidomastoids is also often associated with extreme development of the digastrics (muslces which run under the jaw, and join up with the mastoid process at the base of the skull, along with the aforementioned sternomastoids) and soft tissue around the jaw. This is not unlike the condition hGH jaw, seen in people abusing growth hormone.

Clearly there is some new bone growth since there is a concomitant height increase but, given the relative decrease in bone mass as a proportion of body mass, it must mainly be via an increase in the length and thickness of the long bones of the arms, legs, or both. (In absolute terms, you've only 2.5 times the bone mass, whereas there is something like 6.5 times as much muscle, based on an average individual.)

I would love to think that the developers sat down and went through some sort of thought process such as that, but I suspect that they actually just wanted to produce something that looked cool and distinctive. Anyway, the new Super Mutants we've seen in the screenshots certainly aren't 3D recreations of their 2D predecessors, and that is a shame. Even more of a shame is simply the fact that they do have a certain generic flavour about them.

 

[DarkCorp]

When someone mentioned super mutants, I picture arnold but bigger.

See the thing is super mutants are merely humans that are on a permanent buffout binge. In the end, they are still human beings, just green, bigger, and occasionally dumber.

 

[Brother None]

When someone mentioned super mutants, I picture arnold but bigger.

See the thing is super mutants are merely humans that are on a permanent buffout binge. In the end, they are still human beings, just green, bigger, and occasionally dumber.

I guess this is exactly the way Bethesda thought too.

Which, as is by now well established, is simply wrong.

 

[sonicblastoise]

what bothers me most is the fact that the CONCEPT ART already demonizes the two groups that would pose the most interesting plot elements in the game

ghouls are zombies. they look like zombies, they walk like zombies, they attack like zombies, why not draw them like zombies?? - this is a terrible approach, mimicked by the supermutant design (albeit on a different stereotype)

what Fallout 1 and 2 did well was leaving things NEUTRAL. a ghoul was still a ghoul, and looked like a ghoul, but didn't have to "act like a ghoul." same with supermutants. Bethesda on the other hand, says "What you see is what you get, suckers!"

so now we have a game that is undeniably shallow, because it assumes that no one wants to know what is going on underneath (or that there is anything goin on underneath) unless that NPC looks like a human.

BECAUSE WE ALL KNOW THAT ONLY HUMANS HAVE INTERESTING LIVES.

also, the art style in terms of steampunk and complexity and whatnot...after playing through FO1 and 2 a few times, i've realized that BN is right. the bots in the vaults, pre-apoc, OUGHT TO BE streamlined, sleek, idealistic. BECAUSE THEY ARE PRE-BOMB

as opposed to those cobbled together (if any) in the wasteland. however, it would make sense if we found a Mr. Handy in a town that had be "refurbished" and had a sem-steampunk look. THIS IS ALSO WHY I DON'T FEEL THE VAULT JUMPSUITS SHOULD BE SO BUSY LOOKING.

that is all.

 

[whirlingdervish]

Let's not forget how "cool" the new vaultsuits look with their permanently popped collars...

It seems looking like a total douchebag was all the rage before the war.

 

[Brother None]

(snip)

Eh? There's no ghouls in the concept art.

there's crotch-shooting ghoul-action here, tho'

 

[sonicblastoise]

oh yeahhhhh the thread was about the concept art. ah goshdoodershnickles

i just see all this stuff trying so hard to look "cool" and it bothers me to no end because their idea of "cool" is akin to FO: BoS "Burning Gloves" cool or "Harold has a tree!" cool

and it bothers me. it bothers me!!! there! I SAID IT

the more i look at that cyborgotic bipedal robot the more it screams ROBOCOP and not SENTRY BOT Mk. II and that BOTHERS ME TOO.

the one thing i do like though, is at least they are presenting a UNIFIED approach. no surprises here folks, nopety nopety nope.

furthermore, i resent your implication that what i say can be summed up in a single parenthetical onomatopeoia!!!!

bye

 

[Ausir]

Um... Harold had a tree already in Fallout 2. By the way, in Van Buren his tree turned out to be the key to saving mankind (seriously!).

 

[Brother None]

Um... Harold had a tree already in Fallout 2.

A branch.

 

[Ausir]

A bonsai?

 

[Brother None]

Don't you ever sleep?

 

[Ausir]

Nope. That's the nature of my mutation.