Things that Fallout 3 did right!

gordog_frohman said:
I liked the pip boy. Sure, it's forcibly put on your arm and it is kinda large, but I think it's a well designed interface and it certainly makes you unique in the wasteland. Just wish the pip boy glove got some more love, honestly I don't even know what it does.
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I feel like the wrist-mounted Pip-Boy was a good decision, and it's certainly become iconic, but they kinda dropped the ball in some areas.

1.The design is incorrect,ergonomically/practically speaking. To operate it you have to cover the screen with your arm, the fix to this is as simple as flipping the knobs and switches to the other side of the device. This was a careless mistake that the designer himself admitted was dumb and mindless

2.Making it bio-metrically locked was stupid, and all though New Vegas retconned this, it was still dumb.

3. They could have added some minor references to the 2000 in the design somewhere, perhaps add in a miniaturized vacuum tube/lightbulb vent from the original design.


I realize that saying 3000>2000 is paramount to heresy here, but it's implied in Fallout 2 that it was wrist-mounted and it was very clearly going to be wrist-mounted in Van Buren.
 
I always wondered why VD's pip-boy had a broken button. This guy is going outside to save your asses and you can't even give him a new pip-boy?
 
AlphaPromethean said:
Hassknecht said:
The weapons were pretty cool, yeah, although I kinda disliked the lack of the classic weaponry.
The new 10mm pistol looked ok, but it felt weird. Like, "Yeah, we want something new, but not THAT new". I did like the new laser pistol and rifle designs.
And hell yes, the combat shotgun ruled. Easily one of the most satisfying weapons in the game. Too bad my old favourite, the City Killer, didn't make it.
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I feel like I'm one of the few who prefers the modern 10mm design to the classic. My only suggestion would be to darken the metal and give the handle some wood furnishings and you've got a winner.

The classic design never made sense with it's purpose and function in the first two games anyway.
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That's true, the classic design looked like a revolver but handled like an automatic. Really liked the wood finishes, though, it's my only gripe with the Fallout 3 model, really. Felt kinda unnecessary to bring in a new pistol when it was established that the Colt 6520 was everywhere.
Well, the Classic Fallout Weapons mod for New Vegas implements a pretty nice Colt 6520 model that kinda tries to fix that whole "revolver? auto?" issue by ignoring the revolver-part.
 
Fallout 3 moved the series away from that awful turn based isometric combat. Too bad they tried to develop the game around that legacy style of play with V.A.T.S.

FO3 could've been a kick ass shooter with RPG elements otherwise.
 
Wolverine Fan said:
Fallout 3 moved the series away from that awful turn based isometric combat. Too bad they tried to develop the game around that legacy style of play with V.A.T.S.

FO3 could've been a kick ass shooter with RPG elements otherwise.
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Wouldn't exactly call "removing an integral part of role-playing gameplay to suit own development style" "doing things right", though...
 
I thought the locations that weren't copy+paste subway tunnels were really interesting. One thing Bethesda definitely knew how to do back then was dungeons, and considering that Fallout 3 was basically a dungeon-crawler, they sort of delivered on that.

I really don't understand how they managed to get away with releasing a non-arena shooter FPS in late 2008 without iron sights, though.
 
Wolverine Fan said:
Fallout 3 moved the series away from that awful turn based isometric combat. Too bad they tried to develop the game around that legacy style of play with V.A.T.S.

FO3 could've been a kick ass shooter with RPG elements otherwise.
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I happen to love that "awful turn based isometric combat". The gunplay and overall combat and movement in FO3/NV is slow and clunky as shit and I prefer the combat of 1/2 any day.
 
Regarding that issue, as Gizmo would probably say, regardless the quality of the orange that is Fo3, it doesn't make it the good apple it is supposed to be.
 
I actually honestly prefer the whole FPS thing to the top-down turn-based combat. Just feels more intimate and more involved to me.

The only problem is that Fallout 3 is a terrible FPS, which Obsidian improved upon as best they could with New Vegas. I think I made a thread in the "future-fallout" board about how you could still make the game a decent FPS without removing the interactions of the RPG side of the game from it entirely.
 
Hassknecht said:
AlphaPromethean said:
Hassknecht said:
The weapons were pretty cool, yeah, although I kinda disliked the lack of the classic weaponry.
The new 10mm pistol looked ok, but it felt weird. Like, "Yeah, we want something new, but not THAT new". I did like the new laser pistol and rifle designs.
And hell yes, the combat shotgun ruled. Easily one of the most satisfying weapons in the game. Too bad my old favourite, the City Killer, didn't make it.
Click to expand...


I feel like I'm one of the few who prefers the modern 10mm design to the classic. My only suggestion would be to darken the metal and give the handle some wood furnishings and you've got a winner.

The classic design never made sense with it's purpose and function in the first two games anyway.
Click to expand...

That's true, the classic design looked like a revolver but handled like an automatic. Really liked the wood finishes, though, it's my only gripe with the Fallout 3 model, really. Felt kinda unnecessary to bring in a new pistol when it was established that the Colt 6520 was everywhere.
Well, the Classic Fallout Weapons mod for New Vegas implements a pretty nice Colt 6520 model that kinda tries to fix that whole "revolver? auto?" issue by ignoring the revolver-part.
Click to expand...

This huge amount of heresy in one post. For me, the 10mm "pistol" just has to be a revolver, even if it - in a realistic kind of view - makes not much sense. I really hate how everyone wants to get rid of the revolver part, which made the weapon awesome in the first place (to me, at least).
 
The good characters in 3 were John Henry Eden and LIBERTY PRIME. Eden because of some actually pretty good writing and PRIME because it was funny and didn't appear so much that it got old.

Also I am lefthanded so the PipBoy 3000 actually works for me. :D
 
Liberty Prime is a thing, not a character. It has no will on its own, no initiative, no conscience, no self-awareness, no brain, no AI.
It just broadcast its list of pre-recorded sentences, and blow up whatever is in front on it.
It is even ironic that its sentences are meant to be said agains't communists while it blow up the americans that were agains't communists.
 
naossano said:
Liberty Prime is a thing, not a character. It has no will on its own, no initiative, no conscience, no self-awareness, no brain, no AI.
It just broadcast its list of pre-recorded sentences, and blow up whatever is in front on it.
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Technically he is a character since the description of a character is "A character is a person or creature that interacts with others within a story. There are different kinds of characters in stories, and different ways to describe them."

Also LP does have some form of AI otherwise he'd just shoot everything infront of him (not the "kill Enemy" type since he'd need to process enemy locations but the "literally where ever he's looking" type, he'd have no control where he'd shoot lasers) and he'd just stand there like a dunce since a robot needs AI to move.
 
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WittyUsername said:
The introduction of the game was very well done, I also gotta say that Living in the vault was a pretty nifty thing for a tutorial. It made the idea of this being your home a lot stronger than that of Vault 13
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I agree, the introduction was spot on for the reboot, I liked the sense of life inside the vault and it provide a nice contrast to the outside world that we embarked upon. With that said, IMO they failed to account for how most non-causal players hate redoing intros, IMO FO:NV shorter and optional style is a better fit for the long run.
 
You can save before exiting the vault and change your character's stats while leaving it.
I guess they put that feature specifically for those who didn't want to replay the intro.

Although more C&C inside the vault would have definitely removed the need to NOT replay the vault part.
I guess we gonna count on Project Brazil for that...
 
One thing they actually did really well was story telling through set pieces, holo tapes and terminal entries. But only in relation to the past- everything in modern Fallout 3 was dreadfully written aside from Point Lookout and the Pitt.
 
ChildServices said:
I actually honestly prefer the whole FPS thing to the top-down turn-based combat. Just feels more intimate and more involved to me.

The only problem is that Fallout 3 is a terrible FPS, which Obsidian improved upon as best they could with New Vegas. I think I made a thread in the "future-fallout" board about how you could still make the game a decent FPS without removing the interactions of the RPG side of the game from it entirely.
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I agree NV proves you can have first person + RPG although I would like to see VATS not be dependent on the action points so people who dont want to FPS can play quasi turn based combat with VATS
 
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