New poll

[Bradylama]

Bethesda is only guaranteed sales to their own group of fanboys, however, if they make a crappy Fallout game.

I'd like to say that more people in the gaming press would respect a Fallout sequel that implements the classic mechanic, but in releasing the game on multiple platforms, they're opening themselves to markets that have an over-abundance of people that have never played the original games.

 

[Vax]

Fallout 3 will be a crappy console game that panders to the knuckle dragging xbox crowd.

 

[st0lve]

I dont think it will be like Fo and Fo2.
But I'd guess it would be a cool and fun game, but not "Fallout" cause I don't think you are able to replicate it ~10 years later.

 

[Cimmerian Nights]

Game mechanics aside, who in thier right mind thinks Bethesda has the talent to do the story, setting, characters, and dialogue justice?

 

[Roshambo]

Game mechanics aside,

I still think of the issue pending, if you will have to spend your next level's skill points in a skill to train above the bonus you were given for your last quest, but MrSmileyFaceDude nor anybody else from the programming or QA teams want to really speak about that neat feature. I guess they will keep it a sooper seekrit to be unveiled with the release of Fallout 3 like the shitty scaling system was unveiled with the release of Oblivious.

who in thier right mind thinks Bethesda has the talent to do the story, setting, characters, and dialogue justice?

It really has to be noted that pretty much all of Bethesda's games (except Where's Waldo?), including their TES Adventure spin-offs, have the design elements you mention above, as those elements are not solely confined to the CRPG genre.

And they all basically SUCK. Granted, the storywriting and such were a bit simple early on with TES, but at least they have reasons. Now, too bad the story and setting doesn't match what effectively amounts to reading better in-game fiction than what you are playing for TES, and wishing that you were given the option to read more in-game books in the adventure spin-offs. In fact...

"story, setting, characters"

Hmmm, let's switch that around. Character, story, setting.

Captain Picard, murdered by Bethesda's crappy scaling system, in the tutorial.

And there you have it. No place or character really makes an impression after that, after Bethesda spent that much on him and then killed him off, and this supposedly explains having every line being spoken, but in reality it makes you realize that the only good VO going on literally died within about ten minutes of the game's start and you have to listen to the rest of the lines as you look into some fugly face that is supposed to be of an entirely different gender and race - someone want to explain how such a "beautiful engine" can make people look that hideous? The Radiant AI apparently wasn't as hot shit as it was billed, as it couldn't think well enough for some designers to figure out that um....orc head go on orc body! Really, "Tim Curry on Betty Page" is a pretty frightening idea as I've illustrated, yet it somehow works for TES - now let's see them do fugly for a reason for a super-mutant's face. On a ghoul's body.

And please, on behalf of Bethesda, I have been asked to not make too many digs into their dialogue, as it's going to be damn amazing to watch them suddenly figure out conditions for speech for skill checks, then onto the dialog for Low INT and different degrees of CHA.

 

[4too]

The Measure Of Integrity

The Measure Of Integrity






Rosh:

... someone want to explain how such a "beautiful engine" can make people look that hideous? ...

Bethesda hates people.

............................

Nice forest screen shots.
Trees and soil erosion are more important than people.
Some reviewers seem to have gotten over excited.
These tree huggers must have sprouted such immense 'wood',
they'll never get their pealed pants back on until the sap runs.

Oblivion got glory holed as ART, by the wettest of the third party gushers.
Well. Hitler's architectural drawings were deemed capable amateurism, post card quality, but his scale figures were judged as at best, stick figures. Interesting profile of ART and integrity. Perhaps this is the aesthetic tradition that Bethesda aspires to. The visual construct got the time and development money.
Post card pretty.
The NPC people and the illusion of human interaction did not rate the attention. Cartoonish scale figures, under rendered.

Where did Oblivion work?

Where did Oblivion fail?

Consider that is where their true intent is proved.


Oblivion was a calculated commercial product.

The openly reported, shipped, dysfunctional game system appears proof of shovel ware ethics,

until an official patch proves intent to deliver a full game experience.

In these days of bait and switch, a game box containing a game is an achievement of some ... measure.

From many reports there was A GAME IN THE BOX!

A great game was not cost effective.
A 'good' game was 'good' enough for the altered states of bliss ninnies.
Perhaps this 'good enough' attitude testifies to the contempt Bethesda has for the gaming consumer as a whole.

Lawyers, used car salesmen, and game publishers: Hype masters.

The hype --- and the lies there in --- was as engineered as Oblivion's ugly picture of humanity.
The hype -- and the lies there in -- are as much of this product as the wistful vistas and the poorly programed leveling.

From many reports, the product does not contain a stand alone game engine, but a mod engine. It's a paint by numbers set with all the Radiant AI faces PRE rendered ............ non-human.

The product is the true witness of the design, and ethical integrity of Bethesda - Zenimax.

......................


Short answer Rosh.

Bethesda hates people.







4too

 

[Roshambo]

Like poetry as always, 4too.

Yeah, flashbacks of NWN's OC, and the excuses for it, indeed.

"There's a construction kit and there are many mods out there that don't suck!"

"But I thought I was buying a game that had an editor bundled with it..."

 

[Smoke_Jaguar]

Damn!

I read the last 2 posts and...ohh the rhetoric! Cicero, Socrates and George Bush all rolled into one!Well, maybe not Bush...but still.

Really, those are thorough opinions (some are plain 'in your face' true facts) about what really goes on with 'the industry' today, as we say in the biz.

Rosh, do you think you can get Michael Moore to do a Fahrenheit on us, the Fallout fans, and our struggle with the marketing shit shoveler machine that deprived us of a great game?

 

[Duckman]

I tossed up between, It'll suck, I have never played Oblivion and that Oblivion has nothing to do with Fallout.

So I went it'll suck, as by all reports, Oblivion wasn't great, in fact it sucked. But who knows what will happen...

 

[Roshambo]

Rosh, do you think you can get Michael Moore to do a Fahrenheit on us, the Fallout fans, and our struggle with the marketing shit shoveler machine that deprived us of a great game?

Pfft...the entire industry is so fucked up, he'd die of old age before he'd run out of material.

 

[Bradylama]

Assuming his oversized heart would allow for old age.

Perhaps we should summon the ghost of Walter Cronkite?

 

[Paranoid Jack]

EDIT: just remembered DAC is running a poll like this... http://www.duckandcover.cx/
_________________

Yeah, except theirs works... it won't let you vote repeatedly. So it will actually mean something. Possibly.

Edit: Is anyone else seeing the irony here?

On a site know far and wide for its hatred for everything other than Fallout 1 & possibly Fallout 2 ... where the admins and most of the posters non-stop bash every game released for their broken features, lazy coding, and crap game-play... then No Mutants Allowed puts up a poll that lets people repeatedly vote. Maybe perfection is a bit harder than you imagined?

Muahahahah!

 

[Sander]

Yeah, except theirs works... it won't let you vote repeatedly. So it will actually mean something. Possibly.

Edit: Is anyone else seeing the irony here?

On a site know far and wide for its hatred for everything other than Fallout 1 & possibly Fallout 2 ... where the admins and most of the posters non-stop bash every game released for their broken features, lazy coding, and crap game-play... then No Mutants Allowed puts up a poll that lets people repeatedly vote. Maybe perfection is a bit harder than you imagined?

Muahahahah!

No, we're lazy and we don't care for multiple votes.
It's also pretty much impossible to stop. Unless you work with forum accounts, which is not really advisable.
See, IPs are often dynamic, so blocking based on that doesn't work, e-mail adress doesn't work either obviously, and cookies are often denied or deleted and hence not really usable either.

This is demonstrated by the fact that I can't vote in the poll at DAC at all.

 

[Mani]

I was pessimistic before they released Oblivion and I still am, since Oblivion is just Morrowind 1.5 Shiny Edition it didn't really effect my feelings on what Beth will make of Fallout 3.

If it doesn't suck it will be a pleasant surprise, if it does I won't be disappointed too much=)

 

[uziel]

I haven't been keeping track of Bethedsa's progress on Fallout 3, and I have to admit: I hated Morrowind and I haven't played Oblivion. But even so, I will buy Fallout 3 for the sake of knowing the storyline and the game itself. And if it sucks I'll fire-bomb Bethedsa.

But that aside, I'm doubtful that they'll make it Oblivion with guns. The Fallout fanbase is large enough that they have to pay attention to use, or they'll have a very angry Fallout fanbase, so they're going to at least try to stick to the Fallout form. My hopes are that they'll use the Fallout engine for it and get a better AI programmer, because I don't want another Ian in my party. So while you're all pretty pessimistic about it, I'm holding onto the glimmer of hope that they'll acknowlege that Fallout 3 is supposed to be for the Fallout fans, not the Elder Scrolls dumbasses.

 

[Briosafreak]

Actually Sander it's not so hard, really. This poll is meaningless and irrevelant this way. Bah.

Maybe perfection is a bit harder than you imagined?

What's this, Bethesda new motto?

 

[Roshambo]

Yeah, except theirs works... it won't let you vote repeatedly. So it will actually mean something. Possibly.

Edit: Is anyone else seeing the irony here?

On a site know far and wide for its hatred for everything other than Fallout 1 & possibly Fallout 2 ... where the admins and most of the posters non-stop bash every game released for their broken features, lazy coding, and crap game-play... then No Mutants Allowed puts up a poll that lets people repeatedly vote. Maybe perfection is a bit harder than you imagined?

Muahahahah!

Spanky, there are mods for this forum that could do that, there's also php Nuke modules, and a number of other crap that we could choose to bloat the site with. We'd rather not. Really, a common game from even back in the V13 days was to see how a poll kept track, and stack it in favor of Fallout 3. It happens, and the stacking happens all around.

In fact, there's a registration poll built into the fucking forum system, in case you'd care to notice the basic functionality of phpBB. However, there are reasons for doing this, as Sander has explained, ways around stricter methods, which also turn out to be highly ineffective, and more flourished polling systems. Not everyone cares to register, and the security question we added would likely stack the poll results highly in our favor*. We just find this one works the best without adding any useless server overhead in the poll script that doesn't really do jack shit for controlling anything if you know a way around them.

* - By just having to ask what we don't allow here.

Already from the results I can see:
26.7% (Obliv and Fallout 3 are not the same) Have paid absolutely no attention to Bethesda's game design methods, don't have a clue as to who is producing and having a great deal with the overall design structure, and probably don't care until they actually get to play the game and then start bitching at the wrong time - when they have your money and can shrug at you in regards to any real support, while you have to rely on modders to finish patching the game like people have been unofficially patching Fallout 2 for years now. Welcome to the attitude of the game industry now.

An additional 21.9% (optimistic) really seems to care to pay attention to how the developers design, develop, and then hype their incompetence. And then somehow think that it will suddenly change for Fallout 3. They probably haven't played Fallout in any context than "it's a TB game I kill shit in", and have absolutely no other clue about the real CRPG genre because it has gone to shit.

12.7% (I have not played Oblivion) Likely can smell and see shit before they walk into it, and wisely choose to avoid it.

11.9% (It'll rock!) Are absolute fucking morons who probably liked Bethesda's shitty official mods.

11.8% (I'm pessimistic) Have played Oblivion and Morrowind.

9.6% (I'm unsure) Have played Oblivion, but probably not Morrowind. Or vice-versa.

5.5% (It'll suck) Have been paying attention to the hype, the garbage, and the attention to wringing money from the fans over making sure the game is a solid release. Since it does NOT conform to the commonly expected modern standards of a PC release even by its predecessor's standards, and instead dumbs the game down for console trash, the equasion can be summed up with how Bethesda is selling out their own design and probably everything else they personally touch for console design. That means the PC version will likely be 3rd rate ported crap again, as it was for Morrowind, as it was for Oblivion, and since they can't bother to learn from their own mistakes when it's obvious the first time around, I don't see them suddenly learning the second time, or even a third time, as long as they have the console trash to lick their assholes and the modders to EASILY mod out their incompetence so Bethesda can use them as a crutch. BioWare still hasn't really learned much despite the same, except for how to make excuses as to why they label Action-Adventure and Adventure-RTS games as CRPGs.

 

[MurkyShadow]

Agreed.

The depth should be the thing to worry about, and pessimism
is just closer to realism here.

After playing Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2,
there was long time coming nothing.

I remembered Daggerfall and Arena, and thought,
I remembered good things, ok, the bugs, but that
did not take the fun out of it.

So there was Morrowind being announced.
The spirits rose, the special edition bought,
and playing, the promises dwindled like the ones
of politicians before an election.

You were a loner, walking through a wide land,
often meeting no one, doing the same quests
over and over again.

There were some fine ideas, but they couldn't rescue anything.

And with playing Oblivion, I shall now just sit there,
and say, that I'll be sure, that they make everything
in an other way, then in their former games?

That'll be no optimism, that'll be sublimated blindness.

 

[Big T]

I find it rather strange that people are talking as if they expect a "worthy" sucessor to Fallout, after all, have you ever known a game series that got better as it progressed?

The only one i can think of, off the bat, is the Super Mario games, and that's only if you disinclude the Gameboy & Gamecube iterations. Every other sequel I've played has lacked something in the way that the original did not.

It's a basic rule of gaming: games (almost alwayays) lose something of the essential spark that makes a good game with every attempt at a sequel.

 

[Ratty Sr.]

Nah. Many of the longest-going game series improved with each new sequel. Take Ultima series, for example, with practically every sequel representing a step forward, until everything went downhill with Pagan. There are innumerable other examples as well - Might and Magic, Heroes of Might and Magic, Wizardry, Space Quest, Police Quest, King's Quest, Quest For Glory, Leisure Suit Larry, Final Fantasy...

All of these series had their ups and downs and most are dead now, but they maintained ever-increasing quality for most of their lifetime. It all comes down to how compenently and uncompromisingly the developers and publishers approach each new instalment.