Something to think about. A few words about Fallout 3 .

[Ihniwid]

Ehm, go play Mass Effect. Facial animations are much, much better there.
Hell, go play Troika's Vampire:Bloodlines. From 4(!) years ago. Again: much better facial animation.

I disagree. The facial animations in Mass Effect were robotic at best. My opinion though, you are entitled to yours.

Still believe repetition in an MMO or RPG, like grinding or having a "job" is hard to swallow, thats all. [/quote]

 

[Sander]

I disagree. The facial animations in Mass Effect were robotic at best. My opinion though, you are entitled to yours.

Go buy Vampire: The MAsquerade Bloodlines. Its facial animations are vastly superior to Fallout 3's animations. Which are, by the way, consistently stuck in one emotion and completely unemotive.

Still believe repetition in an MMO or RPG, like grinding or having a "job" is hard to swallow, thats all.

I'm not saying the grind is fun, just that this has nothing whatsoever to do with emergent gameplay.

Also, don't double post, there's an edit button for a reason.

 

[popej]

Oblivion un-modded was utter horse-shit.
But with over a gig of mods downloaded (thats right it took a gig of custom content to balance this bitch out) it was actually quite fun. I liked getting rid of level scaling, so you know, I had to run from some creatures. Which I think that should be true in any true RPG. I hate the whole "I can kill everything MUAHAHAHA"

Well atleast we can agree on that.

I can't bear to play Oblivion without OOO, MMM, Francescos and FCOM installed. I've been using Oscuros Oblivion Overhaul since it was released in 2006 as it basically turns it into a different game in a very subtle fashion. Soto really did save Bethesda' behind for the majority of TES fans. It'd be an injustice if they didn't recruit him and pay him a fortune to clean up their mistakes.

It's the emergence of a similarly talented type who'll mod Fallout 3 that I'm waiting for.

edit: Read this thread: http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=900974&st=0

The op has it nailed, specifically read post #12. Thats exactly the main problem with Fo3.

 

[Andy-Spacetrain]

Sorry, I've just got to add that the final fantasy games have massively changed. Two of the games there were not mentioned were FFXI (a MMORPG) and FFXII (no turn-based fighting). Yet they are still Final Fantasy numbered games. Do I care? Nope.

 

[Ihniwid]

Ah yes that's right, good point. I guess the big difference though is that it has stayed with it's parent company Square...though they did merge with that other one... enix or something? Sorry I havent played FF since the seventh game.

Resident Evil you could argue also went through a great deal of transformation, but that was greeted with overwhelming praise...the games were pretty blocky before the 4th... Hmm... Don't know.

 

[DOF_power]

I couldn't stand level scaling. I love games where you come across creatures that make you yell "Holy shit, I gotta run." That to me makes a game way more immersive, knowing that my character has to improve before I can tackle this. A good related example would be going west of New Reno before level 6. Lots and lots of 'OH SHIT! GOTTA MOVE" moments there.

Navarro run (power armor and SF BoS loot) + sneak = I've killed basically the entire population of New Reno minus children; accidentally shot a child tough.
It takes a lot of saves and reloads but after that you feel like a god.

Can't do that in F3 as you need the power armor perk and stuff degrades.

 

[DOF_power]

Go buy Vampire: The MAsquerade Bloodlines. Its facial animations are vastly superior to Fallout 3's animations. Which are, by the way, consistently stuck in one emotion and completely unemotive.

It's because it uses the HL2 engine witch has a special
face animation-matrix technology. Valve used some research made about face muscles when building their Source engine. They joked that unless it's Jim Carrey they got all face animation/movements/expressions covered.

 

[M-26-7]

I still remember encountering Deathclaws in Fallout for the first time and not being good enough to handle them. The satisfaction of coming back later to kill them was much greater. I haven't had that happen ever in Fallout 3, and I've explored most of the map now.

I've had the same experience. I first saw the supermutants and immediately freaked out and ran, then about ten minutes later I came across two supermutants. I thought fuck it, I'll standing and fight. One had a "nailboard" and the other a hunting rifle (how the hell do they get their fingers through the finger guard?). I dispatched them with ease, mostly with a 10mm. This was maybe 3 hours in to the game and I think I was maybe lvl. 2 or 3. From that moment on I've never been nervous about any enemy and I haven't had any real challenges. I haven't adjusted the difficulty (playing on normal I think) at all, but even on easy a huge monster should be harder than fighting a raider with a simple knife.

 

[Ihniwid]

I found the combat got harder as I went. The Enclave for example and their robots, forget their names that can do everything from laser gattling you to missles to the face...

Yeah the mutants are not hard but the game does a stand up job of keeping pace with you. I never got bored once really...

 

[Ausdoerrt]

Sorry, I've just got to add that the final fantasy games have massively changed. Two of the games there were not mentioned were FFXI (a MMORPG) and FFXII (no turn-based fighting). Yet they are still Final Fantasy numbered games. Do I care? Nope.

Well, FFXI is a bastard child, and after all it was given a lot of grief by most FF series fans anyways.

I haven't played FFXII, but I thought it was TB?

 

[Spoonfeed]

I think Mass Effect is a good comparison, as it goes for this... "cinematic" approach to game dialogue. Fallout 3 tries to be more grey, not just good or bad or neutral. And its nice to see. Anyone agree?

But yeah I'm not saying the Fallout 3 writing is comparible to Shakespeare. Game writing is still untapped as a whole IMO. But "for a game"... its pretty good.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Have you ever played planescape: torment?


i feel that with a little "effort" and "talent" any half assed monkey can write something that at least "FEELS" decent...
in my opinion it's all about 'immersing' yourself in your character, as opposed to just cashing that "fat" bethesda pay check for being at your cubicle 9-5 filling in dialog trees with VERY VERY generic replies.

Everything interaction-related felt really "placeholder" in the game so far...
This is actualy something i'd be interested in modding myself, kill ALL the non "feature" voiceacted bullshit and redo 90% of the "written" dialog to give a more authentic feel to the game.

but then again, maybe i'm just expecting good things to come out of a fucktard company like bethesda, that actually does a worse job at making a game than their modders do.....
ONLY thing bethesda is "good" at is generic landscape creation, and rigging reviews...

Should be an felony punishable by death if you ask me; bribing reviewers.

 

[Ihniwid]

No I havent played that particular game Spoon. All I'm saying is, compared to real writing (IE works of fiction/literature), plot and narrative in videogames still has a long way to go. Its getting there slowly but from what I've played, and I've played my share, we are not even close...

Games have their own advantage to other mediums of entertainment, but to call the kettle black, in this instance, seems silly. So in my opinion, Bethesda's writing is above the average of the game industry as a whole. Is it the best? No but it certainly is not dispicable or so bad you can't immerse yourself in the idea of Bethsoft's post-war DC.

 

[Docnemo]

I don't see what all the arguing is about. Here is my little story with Fallout 3.

I got the game, launched it, created my character ; as I am quite the mentally disturbed person, I made a charismatic scientific girl, like I do in most RPG because, well, role-playing to me isn't just about monster-bashing. Not to say I don't appreciate some mutated face melting, but whatever.

Then I saw NPCs pushing other NPCs, making them glide over the ground.
Then I accidentaly dezoomed in 3rd person view (trying to go back to 1st person view I crashed the game, but let's not get into that), and my eyes bled.
Then I got out of a room and had to click fest some guard dude till he laid dead before me - well, the half of him that wasn't in the wall anyway.

Taking a deep breath, I got to Megathon, where, despite being such a sexy and smart woman, I had to give 100 caps to some guy so that my main quest would progress. I tried taking my clothes off, crouching before him, but that man, no he wouldn't take the hint.
Further down the road, after I clicked to death some raiders with my plasma gun, I arrived in a building ; there was that man, some Russian, with his lady friends - oh my god, that was the time I appreciated the realism of this wonderful game : after being sheltered for all my youth, I obviously went frigid, being unable to stand every thing that related to sex (or maybe I got lesbian with Amata ? not a clue). They just forgot telling me that when I created my character. So well, so long roleplaying freedom, I decided to reshape my role-playing personality to some science-infused charismatic nerd (well if that can possibly exist).

It was now that I entered, naked as I was unable to even TRY putting a power armor on myself (despite being such a tech freak), the radio tower. There, some guy went on saying some things, and how I needed to fetch some stuffs. I tried to play smart, "[intelligence] You are a radio dude !", but it got me nowhere.

My care meter then touched bottom level, I had an horrible Morrowind flashback, and launched another game - or should I say, a game, a fun software where I would be entertained. Fallout 3 has so many OBVIOUS flaws I can't figure how it got such good reviews. But well, I couldn't figure how Morrowind and Oblivion got such good reviews either, because after all I'm just a deficient guy roleplaying pervert nerd chicks that love inducing mental breakdowns, and killing children and AI deficient NPCs. I also like chicken nuggets, but that's a different matter altogether, though it could be related, seing eating fast food is really evil and bad karma. And you know, bad karma sucks. IT SUCKS, YOU WILL NOT TAKE THAT BOTTLE, IT IS STEALING YOU HEAR ME.

I wish Beteshda would just have made a nameless post-apocalyptic RPG, then I wouldn't even have tried it. It's not a matter of being a good sequel or not - this Fallout 3 is just a bad game. Bad RPG, bad FPS.

A last note, as I see the topic around here. It's obvious I'm no english major, since I barely speak it (motherf-), but I must say the game is poorly written. Good writing, in my humble opinion, comes with style and originality ; this games comes with clones and stereotypes (and references to previous games). I'm sorry, maybe it's me being an elitist prick (I am quite smart after all you know), but I don't want to be forced to roleplay some dumb broad that can barely understand what a bunch of retarded NPCs say. I don't like menial tasks IRL, and I don't like them ingame either ; I graduated from the vault, and not any vault - the 101. I have wits, I have brains - hell my father's a doctor y'know, and, as I was not able to see the outside world (though I did play holographic baseball in that hidden room), I am quite the well-read chick.
And yet, yet, all I got was this stupid NPC dialog. It has no depth, no psychology ; but seing they couldn't even write a basic plotscript ("hey guys I can't think up a plot, let's make an open game, and tell them reviewers it's the new hot stuff"), it is no wonder this is no Shakespeare. I'm not even going to say it doesnt offer choices, because at that point I'd gladly have taken linear but well-written dialogs.
There is more to text than hai k thx bai lol, you evil meany you no hurt or i kick ya in de nuts, dey teke er jerbs. (but that's great dude, it's writing while trying to imitate the profund stylistic characteristics of the local internet population ! I mean, dude, you are so bending your voice to reach that which is the true spirit of internet minds !).

EDIT : that script above sure needs to learn the meaning of irony. I suspect he has been working on Fallout 3.

 

[DisraeliGears]

In comparison to the earlier Black Isle Studios Fallouts, Bethesda's Fallout has: One-dimensional, illogical and forgettable characters with little to no personality. Simple, linear, unoriginal narrative. Poorly-written narrative. Poorly-written dialogue. Poorly-voiced dialogue. None of the series' trademark moral ambiguity. No real freedom (there are unkillable NPCs, unavoidable combat etc.). No real choices or consequences. Tactical combat has been removed. Importance of skills/perks/traits removed. Traits removed. Psychologically and emotionally complex quests no longer present. Nuclear power was a feared thing in post-apocalyptic Fallout, and the issue was dealt with intelligently with much subtle social commentary. In Fallout 3, you can shoot nuclear-powered cars with your nuclear catapult early in the game, in a town built around an unexploded nuclear bomb. Fallout 3 fails to deal with any of the interesting human issues that Fallout did. The game lacks any semblance of thoughtfulness. It's also shorter. And easier. The game abuses and contradicts established lore. Fallout 3 fails to even pathetically imitate it's decade-old predecessors' design, originality or meaningfulness. Let alone exceed it.

Even when considered, unfairly, outside the context of being a sequel, it is an exceptionally arrogant, incompetent and poorly designed game all on its own. The animations are clunky and awkward. AI is atrocious. Combat is awkward. World textures and character models are ugly and lacking. Art direction is poor. Much of the crowded "wasteland" is sloppily and lazily copy-pasted from place to place. The musical score is uninspired and in the style of LOTR-esque epic-fantasy - which is completely inappropriate in this game's setting. To top it off, the whole thing is buggy and poorly optimized. And Bethesda's attitude towards the original games' fans has been utterly pathetic. Not to mention their control-tactics over the complete facade that is gaming journalism.

I would like to add that the whole gaming review industry feels completely sold out now after the fallout 3 reviews.
If the gamestop and ign scandals of the past months didn't convince everyone then these fallout 3 reviews should.

Gamespy gave it 5/5.
Gamespy was my last hope for gaming reviews.


It is all sold out and it is all biased.

Shame on a shitty sequel for the 2 most amazing games ever created.

To begin with, I'm going to already say I'm a hypocrite because I posted remarks eerily similiar to these when Oblivion came out, but I'll explain that connection after I argue these points.

1. "1-Dimensional, illogical, forgettable characters" Can you describe for me some characters more interesting than many of the ones in F3? Fawkes, Tenpenny, the devil himself (Burke), the family's leader, all of the kid's town. There are more I'm not mentioning, or haven't yet met probably.

2. " Simple, linear unoriginal narrative" Simple? You're presented choices for good, evil, and neutral in practically every quest. Linear? Basically at any time you can abandon any quest and take up a new one or just head into the wastes. Unoriginal might be defendable, considering the main plot uses previous Fallout plot points I will admit.

3. "Poorly written narrative and dialogue" Please point out to me a non JRP game that has as an extensive narrative and dialogue done in complete voice-over. Do you get less info? Sure, because even Beth's budget can't hire voice actors for hundreds of thousands of lines, not to mention it would take far too long to even listen to. Also, I would argue it is at least somewhat decent dialogue, because it is often varied and humorous, even if certain dialogue trees in certain circumstances are sometimes flawed (Eden)

4. "Poorly Voiced dialogue" This is just lies. Liam Neeson plays your father for christsakes. Some of the hundreds of voiced NPCs don't sound the greatest, but don't you run across annoying sounding people in life also?

5. "No moral ambiguity" Did you play the game? I guess the evil/good meter takes the ambiguity out of it, but you can decide whether to be pure evil all the way to total good. Your given moral decisions in practically every quest

6. "No real freedom" There are unkillable NPCs, and unavoidable combat, yes. Sadly enough, you can't talk your way out of combat with a supermutant. You could go through the main quest killing maybe 5 creatures tops though. Using stealth and NPCs like Fawkes to do the job. As for unkillable NPCs, those are few and far between, and usually those absolutely essential to any semblence of plot.

7" No choices or consequences" Bullshit. Plain out. Hmm, should I blow up megaton or not? Should I let the ghouls into tenpenny or not? Should I tell the slavers about here or there? You can destroy probably 1/2 of the human settlements through choices. That's called consequence.

8. "No tactical combat" Hmm, to me, tactical is more "Allright, I'm going to shoot the rocket launcher out of that SM's hands, then cripple the one with the Sledgehammer" than "Aim for the eyes!"

9. Yes skills/traits etc. were tweaked.

10. All the nuclear stuff I won't touch on because I'm not well versed in F1 and F2.

11. "Shorter and Easier" Often I here of people being able to clear F2 super easily using the navarro method. As for short, you can pull 100 game hours from it one play through, and it warrants at least 2 (good and evil). 200 hours from a modern single player game is pretty damn good.

12. "Animations clunky and awkward" Perhaps you expect too much for a game which loads 90% of it's area in one load to perfectly simulate human movements and gestures for hundreds of NPCs when few games to date can actually do this with a few npcs.

13. "AI" Again, expecting an awful lot. Yes, the NPC AI is not great. Remember, your playing an RPG, not a straight tactical shooter so it would be above and beyond for enemy AI to be as optimized as say, Brothers in Arms. As for regular NPC, they can be stupid yes. In a sandbox programming AI to look after themselves w/o the player can be immensely difficult. Point to me a game which does it better, with more detail in the modern, or close to modern generation.

14. "Combat is awkward" Huh? VATS is amazingly fun to use and brings the combat together perfectly. If your playing it as a straight FPS, then yes it is clunky. If that were the case though, than go buy Halo.

15 "Graphics" Anytime I hear complaints about this I want to scream. Is everyone complain about these playing with Geforce 3s? Unless the game is all low, 800 by 600 res, or if your playing on a 19 inch TV, it looks amazing. Textures and character models are beautiful, even better than Oblivion. Seriously, if you complain about this, then go to Gamestop and play this game on one of their demo stands and see it's beauty.

16. "Music" Yea the score is kinda meh. I'll agree.


Alright, now to qualify my arguments. I said the same things as the OP about Oblivion, myself being a morrowind die hard. I think this game opened my eyes to actually how good Oblivion was, and how difficult it was to make a game more like MW at that stage. I will tell you my conclusion for the reason the depth in these sequels is lost.

Voice acting. Without Voice acting, the potential dialogue is as much as the dev's can type and imagine. When Voice acting comes into the picture this is trimmed down and details left aside. That's why MW had so much more depth than OB, and I imagine why the same holds true for F1 and F2 compared to F3

P.S. For Docnemo.

You were expecting a completely unreal level of freedom for any game. It's still a computer game,and any way to solve or do anything has to be preprogrammed. Also,if your killing by clickfest, than your not using VATS, thereby destroying any uniqueness the combat has. That's your fault, not Beth's. You need to realize your playing a video game, not dungeon mastering in a basement somewhere. In that situation, yes you can do what you want. In a video game, your actions can have a degree of freedom, but are limited by what the devs were able to program in. Hopefully this helps you realize the concept of RPG video games compared to D&D.

PPS- People complaining about lack of child killing, in 99% of high profile western games, killing children aren't allowed, because the same dumb evangelicals who come after GTA would descend on such a game.

 

[Hroesvelgr]

In comparison to the earlier Black Isle Studios Fallouts, Bethesda's Fallout has: One-dimensional, illogical and forgettable characters with little to no personality. Simple, linear, unoriginal narrative. Poorly-written narrative. Poorly-written dialogue. Poorly-voiced dialogue. None of the series' trademark moral ambiguity. No real freedom (there are unkillable NPCs, unavoidable combat etc.). No real choices or consequences. Tactical combat has been removed. Importance of skills/perks/traits removed. Traits removed. Psychologically and emotionally complex quests no longer present. Nuclear power was a feared thing in post-apocalyptic Fallout, and the issue was dealt with intelligently with much subtle social commentary. In Fallout 3, you can shoot nuclear-powered cars with your nuclear catapult early in the game, in a town built around an unexploded nuclear bomb. Fallout 3 fails to deal with any of the interesting human issues that Fallout did. The game lacks any semblance of thoughtfulness. It's also shorter. And easier. The game abuses and contradicts established lore. Fallout 3 fails to even pathetically imitate it's decade-old predecessors' design, originality or meaningfulness. Let alone exceed it.

Even when considered, unfairly, outside the context of being a sequel, it is an exceptionally arrogant, incompetent and poorly designed game all on its own. The animations are clunky and awkward. AI is atrocious. Combat is awkward. World textures and character models are ugly and lacking. Art direction is poor. Much of the crowded "wasteland" is sloppily and lazily copy-pasted from place to place. The musical score is uninspired and in the style of LOTR-esque epic-fantasy - which is completely inappropriate in this game's setting. To top it off, the whole thing is buggy and poorly optimized. And Bethesda's attitude towards the original games' fans has been utterly pathetic. Not to mention their control-tactics over the complete facade that is gaming journalism.

I would like to add that the whole gaming review industry feels completely sold out now after the fallout 3 reviews.
If the gamestop and ign scandals of the past months didn't convince everyone then these fallout 3 reviews should.

Gamespy gave it 5/5.
Gamespy was my last hope for gaming reviews.


It is all sold out and it is all biased.

Shame on a shitty sequel for the 2 most amazing games ever created.

To begin with, I'm going to already say I'm a hypocrite because I posted remarks eerily similiar to these when Oblivion came out, but I'll explain that connection after I argue these points.

1. "1-Dimensional, illogical, forgettable characters" Can you describe for me some characters more interesting than many of the ones in F3? Fawkes, Tenpenny, the devil himself (Burke), the family's leader, all of the kid's town. There are more I'm not mentioning, or haven't yet met probably.

2. " Simple, linear unoriginal narrative" Simple? You're presented choices for good, evil, and neutral in practically every quest. Linear? Basically at any time you can abandon any quest and take up a new one or just head into the wastes. Unoriginal might be defendable, considering the main plot uses previous Fallout plot points I will admit.

3. "Poorly written narrative and dialogue" Please point out to me a non JRP game that has as an extensive narrative and dialogue done in complete voice-over. Do you get less info? Sure, because even Beth's budget can't hire voice actors for hundreds of thousands of lines, not to mention it would take far too long to even listen to. Also, I would argue it is at least somewhat decent dialogue, because it is often varied and humorous, even if certain dialogue trees in certain circumstances are sometimes flawed (Eden)

4. "Poorly Voiced dialogue" This is just lies. Liam Neeson plays your father for christsakes. Some of the hundreds of voiced NPCs don't sound the greatest, but don't you run across annoying sounding people in life also?

5. "No moral ambiguity" Did you play the game? I guess the evil/good meter takes the ambiguity out of it, but you can decide whether to be pure evil all the way to total good. Your given moral decisions in practically every quest

6. "No real freedom" There are unkillable NPCs, and unavoidable combat, yes. Sadly enough, you can't talk your way out of combat with a supermutant. You could go through the main quest killing maybe 5 creatures tops though. Using stealth and NPCs like Fawkes to do the job. As for unkillable NPCs, those are few and far between, and usually those absolutely essential to any semblence of plot.

7" No choices or consequences" Bullshit. Plain out. Hmm, should I blow up megaton or not? Should I let the ghouls into tenpenny or not? Should I tell the slavers about here or there? You can destroy probably 1/2 of the human settlements through choices. That's called consequence.

8. "No tactical combat" Hmm, to me, tactical is more "Allright, I'm going to shoot the rocket launcher out of that SM's hands, then cripple the one with the Sledgehammer" than "Aim for the eyes!"

9. Yes skills/traits etc. were tweaked.

10. All the nuclear stuff I won't touch on because I'm not well versed in F1 and F2.

11. "Shorter and Easier" Often I here of people being able to clear F2 super easily using the navarro method. As for short, you can pull 100 game hours from it one play through, and it warrants at least 2 (good and evil). 200 hours from a modern single player game is pretty damn good.

12. "Animations clunky and awkward" Perhaps you expect too much for a game which loads 90% of it's area in one load to perfectly simulate human movements and gestures for hundreds of NPCs when few games to date can actually do this with a few npcs.

13. "AI" Again, expecting an awful lot. Yes, the NPC AI is not great. Remember, your playing an RPG, not a straight tactical shooter so it would be above and beyond for enemy AI to be as optimized as say, Brothers in Arms. As for regular NPC, they can be stupid yes. In a sandbox programming AI to look after themselves w/o the player can be immensely difficult. Point to me a game which does it better, with more detail in the modern, or close to modern generation.

14. "Combat is awkward" Huh? VATS is amazingly fun to use and brings the combat together perfectly. If your playing it as a straight FPS, then yes it is clunky. If that were the case though, than go buy Halo.

15 "Graphics" Anytime I hear complaints about this I want to scream. Is everyone complain about these playing with Geforce 3s? Unless the game is all low, 800 by 600 res, or if your playing on a 19 inch TV, it looks amazing. Textures and character models are beautiful, even better than Oblivion. Seriously, if you complain about this, then go to Gamestop and play this game on one of their demo stands and see it's beauty.

16. "Music" Yea the score is kinda meh. I'll agree.


Alright, now to qualify my arguments. I said the same things as the OP about Oblivion, myself being a morrowind die hard. I think this game opened my eyes to actually how good Oblivion was, and how difficult it was to make a game more like MW at that stage. I will tell you my conclusion for the reason the depth in these sequels is lost.

Voice acting. Without Voice acting, the potential dialogue is as much as the dev's can type and imagine. When Voice acting comes into the picture this is trimmed down and details left aside. That's why MW had so much more depth than OB, and I imagine why the same holds true for F1 and F2 compared to F3

P.S. For Docnemo.

You were expecting a completely unreal level of freedom for any game. It's still a computer game,and any way to solve or do anything has to be preprogrammed. Also,if your killing by clickfest, than your not using VATS, thereby destroying any uniqueness the combat has. That's your fault, not Beth's. You need to realize your playing a video game, not dungeon mastering in a basement somewhere. In that situation, yes you can do what you want. In a video game, your actions can have a degree of freedom, but are limited by what the devs were able to program in. Hopefully this helps you realize the concept of RPG video games compared to D&D.

PPS- People complaining about lack of child killing, in 99% of high profile western games, killing children aren't allowed, because the same dumb evangelicals who come after GTA would descend on such a game.

I'm sorry, but you are completely off. Voice acting is the least of what makes this game a horrible Fallout game. I think the graphics are great and the gameplay is fun overall, but it is simply undeniable that this game is shallow and vacant when compared to the original Fallout. If you haven't played the originals, I would recommend them to you. But if you haven't played them, please don't presume upon the knowledge that Fallout 3 lives up to their depth and feel in any way other than sheer looks and aesthetics.

-Edit

Particularly in the issues of narrative and character choice, this game is flat. The fact that you are presented with a whole big three options ("Free hugs for all," "All I care about is caps," "Fuck you, die") in every quest is not a valid defense, but is indeed exactly what is wrong with this game. There is no true choice, there are no true moral questions when your only options are to kill or allow to live a world of shallow puppets. In Fallout you were presented with situations in which you could choose to influence the world with actual consequences in unique and morally quixotic ways. "Shall I go around killing everything or not" is the only choice you have in Fallout 3, and it's a shallow choice at that. Whereas in Fallout you had to *gasp* think about the ethical implications of your actions, often choosing between not just "good" or "bad" outcomes, but decide between "bad", "bad" or "worse" outcomes based on your personal interpretations of what was the lesser evil. The moral choices in Fallout 3 are shallow and vacuous, and thus any choice the player makes is trivial.

For example, one of the few pivotal "moral" quandries that Fallout 3 poses to the player is the choice of destroying or saving Megaton. The outcome is basically the same either way, except you have a town in one and a crater in the other.

In Fallout, one of the many examples of tough ethical decisions is a twisted situation in which the player can influence the fate of a town by choosing to keep a totalitarian regime in power through murder and deceipt, or to allow a shady gang to control the scene through murder and betrayal. Either way there is truly no right or wrong answer and either way the player must be complicit in bloodshed and either way someone innocent dies. It is up to you to search for what you believe personally to be ethically correct as the answer is never presented to you as simply as "You've lost karma."

Fallout 3 boast a huge world, which yes you are free to explore unless you are on the undoubtedly linear and simplistic main quest, and about 36,000 more lines of dialogue than Fallout 1. However, it is an interesting question to ask one's self how Falout 1, inspite of its technological disadvantages, manages to be an infinetly more complex, involved and intelligent game than Fallout 3.

"Killing," "Helping" or "Helping for money" are the only questions you are allowed to ask yourself in Fallout 3, and this hardly exemplifies choice OR consequence. Only the shallow feeling of playing with dolls.

Technical issues aside, you are arguing with a post that proves its writer to be mature and intelligent. Is it so much to ask that the game we've been waiting for for 10 years be the same?

 

[Tycn]

Can you describe for me some characters more interesting than many of the ones in F3? Fawkes, Tenpenny, the devil himself (Burke), the family's leader, all of the kid's town. There are more I'm not mentioning, or haven't yet met probably.

The characters are practically all built around binary opposites. That works for something like KotOR... not Fallout.

Graphics

Compare it to Dead Space. Compare it to Mass Effect. Compare it to Far Cry 2. It doesn't look horrible, but it is certainly dated.

"Animations clunky and awkward"Perhaps you expect too much for a game which loads 90% of it's area in one load to perfectly simulate human movements and gestures for hundreds of NPCs when few games to date can actually do this with a few npcs

Far Cry 2 has no loading times at all once you enter the game, yet their NPCs don't walk like crippled geriatrics suffering from a cluster of painful hemorrhoids.

No choices or consequences

The consequences of your actions rarely stretch beyond what you're directly interacting with. 'consequence' merely comprises of more or less loot, an extra trader, the loss of a trader. Not exactly game altering events. Megaton is one exception, but it's clearly because it was intended as previewer fodder.

skills/traits

There's a lot less characterisation with the new system; it's not hard for your character to do everything. Building a character was a core component of the previous games.

It's not a bad game, and it's certainly a cut above Oblivion. Still, it isn't Fallout.

 

[Tagaziel]

When did Bethesda say they intended to make a sequel using the exact same mechanics as in Fallout 1 & 2? Because that is basically what the guy quoted in OP is accusing Bethesda of not doing.

When they said it's a sequel.

Sequel implies at least some sort of continuity.

It should be obvious Bethesda isn't going to pour $10M into a turn based isometric text based RPG. They aren't idiots. They intend to keep making games and they do so by making money. Hence they make games that sell.

Their inability to understand how to make a turn-based cRPG game that sells only shows how limited and lacking in talent they are.

Obviously they liked the Fallout setting and some of the gameplay elements. So they bought the property and use whatever they like from there. They have, and it unreasonable to demand that they should, no real obligation to keep you or the previous developers happy.

Then why buy the rights at all? For the name?

So once again, complaining that the combat isn't turn based, when that has been known for at least four years is borderline retarded. Complaining that the real time combat with VATS is not satisfying (should you feel that way) isn't.

I smell a troll.

 

[MkH^]

I'm sorry, but you are completely off. Voice acting is the least of what makes this game a horrible Fallout game. I think the graphics are great and the gameplay is fun overall, but it is simply undeniable that this game is shallow and vacant when compared to the original Fallout. If you haven't played the originals, I would recommend them to you. But if you haven't played them, please don't presume upon the knowledge that Fallout 3 lives up to their depth and feel in any way other than sheer looks and aesthetics.

-Edit

Particularly in the issues of narrative and character choice, this game is flat. The fact that you are presented with a whole big three options ("Free hugs for all," "All I care about is caps," "Fuck you, die") in every quest is not a valid defense, but is indeed exactly what is wrong with this game. There is no true choice, there are no true moral questions when your only options are to kill or allow to live a world of shallow puppets. In Fallout you were presented with situations in which you could choose to influence the world with actual consequences in unique and morally quixotic ways. "Shall I go around killing everything or not" is the only choice you have in Fallout 3, and it's a shallow choice at that. Whereas in Fallout you had to *gasp* think about the ethical implications of your actions, often choosing between not just "good" or "bad" outcomes, but decide between "bad", "bad" or "worse" outcomes based on your personal interpretations of what was the lesser evil. The moral choices in Fallout 3 are shallow and vacuous, and thus any choice the player makes is trivial.

For example, one of the few pivotal "moral" quandries that Fallout 3 poses to the player is the choice of destroying or saving Megaton. The outcome is basically the same either way, except you have a town in one and a crater in the other.

In Fallout, one of the many examples of tough ethical decisions is a twisted situation in which the player can influence the fate of a town by choosing to keep a totalitarian regime in power through murder and deceipt, or to allow a shady gang to control the scene through murder and betrayal. Either way there is truly no right or wrong answer and either way the player must be complicit in bloodshed and either way someone innocent dies. It is up to you to search for what you believe personally to be ethically correct as the answer is never presented to you as simply as "You've lost karma."

Fallout 3 boast a huge world, which yes you are free to explore unless you are on the undoubtedly linear and simplistic main quest, and about 36,000 more lines of dialogue than Fallout 1. However, it is an interesting question to ask one's self how Falout 1, inspite of its technological disadvantages, manages to be an infinetly more complex, involved and intelligent game than Fallout 3.

"Killing," "Helping" or "Helping for money" are the only questions you are allowed to ask yourself in Fallout 3, and this hardly exemplifies choice OR consequence. Only the shallow feeling of playing with dolls.

Technical issues aside, you are arguing with a post that proves its writer to be mature and intelligent. Is it so much to ask that the game we've been waiting for for 10 years be the same?

I love the original Fallouts as much as the next poster, but I think you are letting the feeling of nostalgia for them to get in the way. The voice acting in Fallout 3 isn't perfect, but the originals featured hardly any voice acting at all, and what little there was, it was way overdramatic. Didn't bother me, but neither does the voice acting in F3. The dialogue tree didn't really differ much in the originals either, you mostly had the good, neutral and bad options. I think you're referring to the Hub with the "bad or worse" thing? F3 certainly has few similar quests too. I agree that the originals were more intelligent and complex in some parts, but the quests are not that much different in the third game when you think of it, nor is the dialogue. I think you should play the original ones again and try to make an objective comparison.

 

[Tagaziel]

1. "1-Dimensional, illogical, forgettable characters" Can you describe for me some characters more interesting than many of the ones in F3? Fawkes, Tenpenny, the devil himself (Burke), the family's leader, all of the kid's town. There are more I'm not mentioning, or haven't yet met probably.

Killian Darkwater, Maxson and his family tree, Richard Grey. President Richardson and Frank Horrigan. Marcus. Myron, Sulik, Vic. ZAX. The Lieutenant. Katrina. Cabbot and Vree. Dane. Morpheus. Lynette (with all her bitchiness). Vegeir and the Slags. President Tandi.

HAROLD.

Quite a lot of characters I remember, and with more interesting backstories. Especially Harold.

2. " Simple, linear unoriginal narrative" Simple? You're presented choices for good, evil, and neutral in practically every quest. Linear? Basically at any time you can abandon any quest and take up a new one or just head into the wastes. Unoriginal might be defendable, considering the main plot uses previous Fallout plot points I will admit.

You don't understand the term linear, do you? Quests in Fallout 3 have often only ONE sequence of events that's the same every single time you play. The main quest is a fine example, as it can be done in one way and one way only, unless you have prior knowledge of the game.

3. "Poorly written narrative and dialogue" Please point out to me a non JRP game that has as an extensive narrative and dialogue done in complete voice-over. Do you get less info? Sure, because even Beth's budget can't hire voice actors for hundreds of thousands of lines, not to mention it would take far too long to even listen to. Also, I would argue it is at least somewhat decent dialogue, because it is often varied and humorous, even if certain dialogue trees in certain circumstances are sometimes flawed (Eden)

He states that it's BAD WRITING, not bad voiceacting (though that's an issue too). Most of the dialogue is annoying and uninspired, especially in Lamplight, Bigtown or Tenpenny Towers.

4. "Poorly Voiced dialogue" This is just lies. Liam Neeson plays your father for christsakes. Some of the hundreds of voiced NPCs don't sound the greatest, but don't you run across annoying sounding people in life also?

Annoying is one thing, speaking like he doesn't give a shit is another. One Liam Neeson doesn't excuse the shitty quality of the rest of the voice actors.

Like Moira Brown.

5. "No moral ambiguity" Did you play the game? I guess the evil/good meter takes the ambiguity out of it, but you can decide whether to be pure evil all the way to total good. Your given moral decisions in practically every quest

You don't understand the term ambiguity either.

Fallout was defined by the colour gray - there were no good or evil people in the wasteland. That isn't a factor in Fallout 3 where you have cleanly defined good and evil.

6. "No real freedom" There are unkillable NPCs, and unavoidable combat, yes. Sadly enough, you can't talk your way out of combat with a supermutant. You could go through the main quest killing maybe 5 creatures tops though. Using stealth and NPCs like Fawkes to do the job. As for unkillable NPCs, those are few and far between, and usually those absolutely essential to any semblence of plot.

But you still have to do it in a pre-determined way, in a pre-determined sequence. Unlike Fallout 1 for instance, where there were at least three ways to destroy the Cathedral, one of which didn't require you to use any violence.

Unlike Fo3, which requires you to shoot your way in. Why not talk your way in as an Enclave officer?

7" No choices or consequences" Bullshit. Plain out. Hmm, should I blow up megaton or not? Should I let the ghouls into tenpenny or not? Should I tell the slavers about here or there? You can destroy probably 1/2 of the human settlements through choices. That's called consequence.

Primitive and immediate, yes. Fallouts are characterized by emphasis being put on long-term results of your actions rather than the consolish immediate gratification crap.

You kill Gizmo, fine, you killed a crime boss. You don't know the consequences. You kill Rhombus, same. Don't fix the water purifier, same.

In Fo3 everything is laid out for you to eat. No thought needed.

8. "No tactical combat" Hmm, to me, tactical is more "Allright, I'm going to shoot the rocket launcher out of that SM's hands, then cripple the one with the Sledgehammer" than "Aim for the eyes!"

Har har, very funny.

Tactics are primarily using the terrain to your advantage. It was essential in Fallout, here it amounts to running up to the enemy and VATSing his head.

9. Yes skills/traits etc. were tweaked.

Dumbed down you mean. SPECIAL is hardly recognizable. And largely irrelevant.

11. "Shorter and Easier" Often I here of people being able to clear F2 super easily using the navarro method. As for short, you can pull 100 game hours from it one play through, and it warrants at least 2 (good and evil). 200 hours from a modern single player game is pretty damn good.

I finished most of the game in 24 hours.

12. "Animations clunky and awkward" Perhaps you expect too much for a game which loads 90% of it's area in one load to perfectly simulate human movements and gestures for hundreds of NPCs when few games to date can actually do this with a few npcs.

How is the size of the world tied to the quality of the animations? Animators don't create the world, it's not a mod, it's a high budget AAA game.

13. "AI" Again, expecting an awful lot. Yes, the NPC AI is not great. Remember, your playing an RPG, not a straight tactical shooter so it would be above and beyond for enemy AI to be as optimized as say, Brothers in Arms. As for regular NPC, they can be stupid yes. In a sandbox programming AI to look after themselves w/o the player can be immensely difficult. Point to me a game which does it better, with more detail in the modern, or close to modern generation.

Again, how is that relevant? RPGs should have better enemy AI than shooters.

Oh wait. Fo3 is a shooter.

14. "Combat is awkward" Huh? VATS is amazingly fun to use and brings the combat together perfectly. If your playing it as a straight FPS, then yes it is clunky. If that were the case though, than go buy Halo.

The FPS mechanics are clunky and broken. VATS doesn't fix it, as it's a superpower like bullet time, not a legitimate, balanced combat feature.

15 "Graphics" Anytime I hear complaints about this I want to scream. Is everyone complain about these playing with Geforce 3s? Unless the game is all low, 800 by 600 res, or if your playing on a 19 inch TV, it looks amazing. Textures and character models are beautiful, even better than Oblivion. Seriously, if you complain about this, then go to Gamestop and play this game on one of their demo stands and see it's beauty.

No shadows. Artificial looking, especially the dead living people and bleak colour palette.

Alright, now to qualify my arguments. I said the same things as the OP about Oblivion, myself being a morrowind die hard. I think this game opened my eyes to actually how good Oblivion was, and how difficult it was to make a game more like MW at that stage. I will tell you my conclusion for the reason the depth in these sequels is lost.

Two Worlds is better than Oblivion in every aspect. And is bigger. So it's not that difficult, all it needs is a little talent.

Voice acting. Without Voice acting, the potential dialogue is as much as the dev's can type and imagine. When Voice acting comes into the picture this is trimmed down and details left aside. That's why MW had so much more depth than OB, and I imagine why the same holds true for F1 and F2 compared to F3

Voice acting shouldn't be a limiting factor for dialogue. Fallout 1's Talking Heads had the most to say out of the NPCs (mostly).

 

[zioburosky13]

No shadows. Artificial looking, especially the dead living people and bleak colour palette.

Especially for a game engine came out in 2006. There is a game call DOOM 3 which still has the best shadow in game. And it is 4 years old now.

[
Hell, go play Troika's Vampire:Bloodlines. From 4(!) years ago. Again: much better facial animation.

And very hot female character too.

I wonder people who praise VAT are those who play FO 3 with a fucking joypad... I mean, for christ's sake playing a FPS game with joypad?! It's madness!