The Vault and Fallout 4 at Gamescom

BSG does have the right to redefine the fallout genre, after all it's their franchise now. I don't quite agree on " For Fallout 3 to be a proper Fallout game should have been top down and turn based" It's like saying that the only proper GTA games are the top down view GTA1 & 2.
 
They own the name and perhaps everything that comes with it, but they don't own the original spirit or mindset that created it. And as they have demonstrated with Fallout 3 and the trailer to Fallout 4, they never will.
Outside some superficial resemble and use of similar themed concepts they absolutely don't understand what Fallout is about. It is not about shooting and goofing off in a retro 50s future. That setting was just one of many elements that made up the game and honestly did not revolve around it, it was just icing on the cake.

It was about recreating a Pen and Paper RPG experience on the PC in which the designers sought to create a world in which the player could interact in as much ways as possible (and they still did not reach the maximum level of interactivity out of it as that would require more development time and a bigger budget), have the player make choices and consequences that decided the strength, weaknesses and fate of the player character and people around him/her, and tie a storyline into it that would make the player go out, explore the place, and interact with characters and background.

Rather than reducing gameplay options to make 'smoother' gameplay they should be adding options to make an even more varied experience every time you play a new game and build a new character.
If this streamlining of the game continues Bethesda should eventually just drop the open world and just give the player levels to go through.
 
Last edited:
Filterfi said:
BSG does have the right to redefine the fallout genre, after all it's their franchise now. I don't quite agree on " For Fallout 3 to be a proper Fallout game should have been top down and turn based" It's like saying that the only proper GTA games are the top down view GTA1 & 2.
Click to expand...

"after all it's their franchise now" <-- This is irrelevant. I don't think anyone here is arguing whether they have the legal right to change the Fallout brand. The discussion is about art aesthetics, not copyright law. If I bought Star Wars from Disney and decided to use the name to make romantic comedies about orcs and dragons, maybe no one could sue me, but they would have plenty of reason to be angry about it. Saying that they own the franchise so whatever they say is correct does not make any sense.
 
Jabberwok said:
"after all it's their franchise now" <-- This is irrelevant. I don't think anyone here is arguing whether they have the legal right to change the Fallout brand. The discussion is about art aesthetics, not copyright law. If I bought Star Wars from Disney and decided to use the name to make romantic comedies about orcs and dragons, maybe no one could sue me, but they would have plenty of reason to be angry about it. Saying that they own the franchise so whatever they say is correct does not make any sense.
Click to expand...


I agree with that :)
It's just that there is a difference when the original authors do sequels and when sombody gets it after they set the tone. Setting of new vegas was a lot better ( closer to f1,f2 spirit) then the f3, and it was thanks to the work of some of the original authors. Fallout 4 has a potential to be a good action game with rpg elements and it will most likely be a bad RPG and a bad fallout game with award wining writing :twisted:.
 
To be honest, I think it was Emil Pagliurlo that soured Fallout 3. He might be skilled at writing fictional Dragon Languages, but that's about the extent of it. He relies too strongly on cliche' and tropes to pin his story upon that it falls down flat. An ideal Fallout is something like New Vegas, but with Bethesda's support and world-building teams. There was probably a lot of legal red tape preventing them from working on NV or something. Just imagine Fallout 3 with Obsidian's actually good writing.

As an addendum, as good as Van Buren would've been, it likely wouldn't have done as well, and we'd still be where we are today, with Kickstarter Campaigns for Fallout 4. Cause' you know. "Top down is lame!"

Personally, I think Fallout 3 would've been an awesome RTS/RPG. Making deals with caravan traders, or becoming a head of the BoS and shoring up a huge regiment of Paladins to raid a tech-hoarder base. Would've looked marvelous, anywho.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I had ideas about a RTS Fallout, made units, and divided each unit into a specific "factory" ala Company of Heroes.

However after I played Wargame I was like "these factories are kinda lame, decks ftw". After a while, though, I just got bored of it. It's not like anyone is going to use the idea anyway. But I can complete it if anyone wishes.
 
I fucking hate how the word "Trope" has acquired so many negative connotations nowadays thanks to social media.... Everything has tropes, it's impossible to write anything that has no tropes....
 
Well, you could write something that has no tropes.

It'd just be a convoluted mishmash of nonsense that has no themes or rationale.

Yeah, it's original, but it's not gonna be good.

It's not as if it's hard to come up with a story, but it can be hard to write a good story.

But the things that make good stories, that stuff isn't hard to grasp.

Fleshed-out characters, compelling narratives, interesting settings.

But for some reason, people seem to think that good writing and good gameplay counteract each other, when the truth is they don't.

I don't think it's too much to ask for a game to have compelling gameplay and a great story as well.

It's developers focusing their attention in the wrong places that's making games seem like slogs nowadays.
 
Walpknut said:
I fucking hate how the word "Trope" has acquired so many negative connotations nowadays thanks to social media.... Everything has tropes, it's impossible to write anything that has no tropes....
Click to expand...

Where has "trope" acquired a negative connotation? It's just a word for "a commonly recurring literary or rhetorical device."

The reason it's good to talk about tropes because sometimes people include these things "just because this is the way it's been done in the past" and while this is lazy, it's generally forgivable. But sometimes an existing trope is a negative, or will be perceived as a negative by a certain portion of your audience (whose business you ought to be pursuing.) So if a trope has a meaning, and you're not aware of that meaning, sometimes you're going to use that trope and end up saying something you didn't intend to say.

I mean, upsetting people on purpose is one thing, but there's no benefit to be had in upsetting people by accident. If you can avoid doing this by thinking about or talking about how certain literary devices are going to be perceived, you can then offend people only when you mean to. This is pretty much 100% a good thing, so I'm entirely in favor of the critical discussion of tropes.
 
Last edited:
It's impossible to not offend anyone byaccident, which is why the idea of sanitizing your work so it doesn't ever offend anyone always results in blandness.
Also people have been using Tropes interchangeably with cliche very recently and they even over use the term, usually attaching it to some of the most random shit. Usually because they think Tropes are an automatically bad thing that you should fight, when Tropes are just reflections of a culture, not the other way around.
 
generalissimofurioso said:
Well, you could write something that has no tropes.

It'd just be a convoluted mishmash of nonsense that has no themes or rationale.
Click to expand...

You mean like real life?

For fucks sake. I want tropes in my games/movies/books. If I wanted realism I would go outside. I read/play/watch things BECAUSE I want to get away from real life.

The thing is, one should avoid the bad tropes. Like Fridge logic. Or Rule of Cool.
 
Walpknut said:
It's impossible to not offend anyone byaccident, which is why the idea of sanitizing your work so it doesn't ever offend anyone always results in blandness.
Also people have been using Tropes interchangeably with cliche very recently and they even over use the term, usually attaching it to some of the most random shit. Usually because they think Tropes are an automatically bad thing that you should fight, when Tropes are just reflections of a culture, not the other way around.
Click to expand...

Just because preventing all instances of a bad thing is impossible, does not mean that we should not attempt to prevent as many as we can. I mean, we're probably never going to completely eliminate murder either.

So while you can never be completely sure nobody will be offended by something you make, you can still make reasonable efforts to avoid offending people with things you know (or can easily discover) are offensive to those people. Having made a reasonable effort, those offended accidentally will generally be assuaged if you apologize and make a note to do better next time. I mean, even if they're just wrong, it costs you nothing to say "sorry."

I mean, it's pretty obvious that if you're making something you should probably attempt to avoid, say, really reductive racial stereotypes, even if they are an established part of culture.
 
Last edited:
Or I can just not let entitled people's complaining about mudane stuff occupy my mind or time. Specially because that kind of mentality is extremely selective with it's empathy, what if my work has very much Left wing ideology? Shoudl I supress that because I know right wing oriented people will get offended? Why should an artist apologize for shit that doesn't even make sense? That just sounds like people wanting to turn every creative person into their personal bitch. Even when I get offended by a line of dialogue or a story I don't demand apologies, I just don't indulge on said thing anymore.....

For Example, my attitude towards Fallout 4 is of disgust and vocal disaproval, but I wont demand Bethesda to apologize to me, I'll just not support the game.
 
Last edited:
generalissimofurioso said:
Well, you could write something that has no tropes.
Click to expand...
I think it's actually impossible to create something without tropes since you wouldn't be able to have averted, subverted, inverted or played straight tropes. But it is impossible to do anyway since if you didn't use any tropes you'd be playing straight the fact you weren't using tropes, which I guess would turn into a logic bomb (which is a trope itself) since you wouldn't be using them while at the same time using them.

I think this spells it out better than me though. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/TheTropelessTale
 
Last edited:
generalissimofurioso said:
But for some reason, people seem to think that good writing and good gameplay counteract each other, when the truth is they don't.
Click to expand...

Definitely agree here. There's a similar false dichotomy played up in the film industry that a movie can either be 'fun' or 'good art' but can't be both. And that cynical brainfart has infected AAA game development. Fortunately, it's not everywhere, there are plenty of great developers out there doing both, but I get the sense that there is this business culture stereotype of how entertainment works that worms its way into any studio with a big enough marketing budget. I see it as an outsider angle, because I don't think that actual artists feel this way.

Or maybe the issue is that once a budget goes high enough, everyone just assumes that writing won't affect sales, so who cares. But in the case of Fallout 3, I kind of agree with what someone else said, that the style that may have worked well for Elder Scrolls fantasy lore just does not translate to retro-50s post-apocalyptic sci-fi. And when I put it that way, it's hard to believe they ever thought it would.
 
Big No said:
generalissimofurioso said:
Well, you could write something that has no tropes.
Click to expand...
I think it's actually impossible to create something without tropes since you wouldn't be able to have averted, subverted, inverted or played straight tropes. But it is impossible to do anyway since if you didn't use any tropes you'd be playing straight the fact you weren't using tropes, which I guess would turn into a logic bomb (which is a trope itself) since you wouldn't be using them while at the same time using them.

I think this spells it out better than me though. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/TheTropelessTale
Click to expand...

Well, if you tried it I guess you would end up with a real story. And let us be honest, most lifes are extremly boring - compared to a good book.

However there is literary realism as style. And yes, its fucking boring.
 
The only way to write a tropeless book is to smash the keyboard with an open palm for 100 pages. Narrative archetypes are also tropes, so no 3 act structure or anything else. Your story can't even make sense.
 
yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu yvgu

-Tropeless Post.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top