Why Fallout 3 is not as bad as most people on this forum think

[naossano]

I can't agree with you on this one either. Bethesda had enough reputation in their own right that they didn't need the Fallout name. It's not like they bought it to take on the FO franchise fans. As you continue to point out, they made a game that was very little like the original FO games, and it was very successfully, so clearly they didn't need the name.

With these bits you yourself summed up quite nicely the beefs dem FO3 haters have with it However much you argue about anything this way or that.

Interplay sold the right to Bethesda. It was a publisher that sold to another publisher.
Black Isles was the devellopper. When Black Isles was closed down by interplay, the team made Obsidian.
Obsdian is not involved in the publishing or selling the rights, just making the games.

Bethesda didn't need the name ? That name still selling games 10 years after (at the moment Fo3 released). Let's pretend it is true.
What about the setting ? They took everything that they wanted in it.
They used the post-apo setting, the US/china war, the FEV, the vault, the GECK, the BOS, the enclave, the super-mutants, the models of robots, the ghouls, Harold, the deathclaws, the brahmins and other animals, some plot-point (being pushed of the vault twice, the need of water etc...)
Try to remove every content that was existing before fallout 3.
What there is left ? What did they brought ? The Institute, the Talon Mercenaries, the regulators, the brotherhood outcast and a whole lot of plotholes ?
Everything else is Black Isles/Obsidian stuff.
So basically, they used a completelly preexisting setting, but they owe absolutly nothing to those who created it ?
I am not saying that they should kiss Obsidian feet everyday (maybe they should...) but they owe definitally far more to them than the opposite.

 

[TheChosen1]

Or is that not called herding you into a decision? And you keep complaining about the deathclaws, the DC was full of Super Mutants that apparently were strong enough to rip a man apart with their bare hands, yet it doesn't work as a good device to scare the player away as I was able to take a stroll through DC with just a pistol and shotgun. So if the DJ is telling you to stay away from DC then you can ignore him, but if Sunny Smiles and a sign tell you that there are deathclaws in the quick area, then you get pissed.

Please. Warnings in video games are laughable. You're the hero. You're supposed to be able to do things other people can't. Sunny Smiles also warns you about Gecko's and Coyotes. Did you have trouble with those?

I love how you keep telling me that the only problem with Vegas is that it forces you into the main quest but completely ignore the fact that F3 was full of plot holes, stupid references and recycled events. And yes, I did get a killable children mod, but that did not get me entry to LL and I still had to go through with helping the stupid kids because speech is retarded in F3. Also the mod labelled me as a very bad person and I had to fight two overpowered dogs. Next thing you're going to bitch about is that F2 forces you into following the main quest to Vault City and doesn't let you explore the area and that you can't get to Navarro by "exploring" because the Enclave patrols are too strong, how about blaming F1 for installing that timer for finding the water chip?

What sounds more dangerous, Coyote or Deathclaw.

Oh yes, it's the government that nuked the world, by the way that everything played out, both sides had no morals, the only thing they were concerned about was making money and having enough energy to sustain THEIR country, they did not care about operatives lives, they wanted to win at any cost, so a few lives for the lives of many will be nothing for the GOVERNMENT, the family, friends, other relatives would of course be devastated.

 

[naossano]

I forgot to mention it earlier, mods only work for pc. Console user are condamned to endlessly spare little lamplight children.

 

[Mathius]

I think it's highly unlikely that Fallout 3 would've been so much of a success without the name. There were 2 reasons I bought it - 1) I was genuinely curious what a Fallout game done in open-world 3d style would feel like (and I'd ask for a refund there, in that specific case) and

2) Oblivion was, compared to Morrowind, such an enormous dissapointment in terms of immagination and variety that them making a Fallout game got me thinking that it was maybe going to be an attempt at another Morrowind - discarding everything that's stale about fantasy, but giving you a really different and immaginative open world to take a vacation in. I think I wasn't alone in this, and there really was a chance for Bethesda's redemption towards a lot of people who, through Morrowind, got to think about them as sort of artistic innovators but were let down by the shallow and cookie cutter pile of poo that was Oblivion. There were Planescape Torment fans who were charmed by Morrowind, hooked purely on the aestethics, that's how standout and immaginative that place felt. Most of Bethesda's cred, back when they had any but production costs and money, came from Morrowind, and they had plenty of well deserved cred. Problem is, Bethesda arsed it up - Morrowind's a great vacation spot, fallout 3's scenery isn't.

In short, the name was very important. They've alienated quite a few folks by following up a sort of ground breaking game (Morrowind) with a game that was aestehicaly the polar opposite (Oblivion). Then, for their next game they took the name of a franchise which was also remembered as something "unlike anything else", and there was a lot of folks to whom this looked promising. At least it promised not to be bland, rehashed, unimagginative and badly written. I didn't buy Skyrim because I've got burned on Oblivion, but I HAD bought Fallout 3 for the same reason. So they managed to not only arse up the potential to make a 3d fallout game actually good, but even the promise to make a Bethesda game that was worthy of a fond memory. Double fail.

And if you ask me, Oblivion was about as big of a step backwards for TeS games as FO3 was a poor move for the FO franchise. The huge and enduring popularity of Morrowind came from it pushing the limits of what you can think of when you say "fantasy". The only thing Oblivin pushed limits off is hardware sales. For Fallout 3 to work out - I didn't have too much expectations. For Oblivion to be what it is, from guys who made Morrowind? That actually shocked me quite a bit.

Again, you assume that everyone thinks like you do. This is why I'm not arguing with you anymore. Oblivion won many game of the year awards on its own. Other games that came out at the same time like Two Worlds were compared to it as a standard to be held up to. Lots of people did think that it was a dumbed down version of Morrowind just like a lot of people thought Skyrim was a dumbed down version of Oblivion, but that didn't stop people from buying it and it didn't stop people from still buying it today. When all the other games are being stripped from the big box stores like Best Buy, you can still walk in and buy a copy of Oblivion for PC or XBox (I know because I did just last year). And if I'm not mistaken it was also one of the pioneers of the DLC system.

Again, just because you didn't like a game doesn't mean it wasn't a success.

Bethesda didn't need the name ? That name still selling games 10 years after (at the moment Fo3 released). Let's pretend it is true.
What about the setting ? They took everything that they wanted in it.
They used the post-apo setting, the US/china war, the FEV, the vault, the GECK, the BOS, the enclave, the super-mutants, the models of robots, the ghouls, Harold, the deathclaws, the brahmins and other animals, some plot-point (being pushed of the vault twice, the need of water etc...)
Try to remove every content that was existing before fallout 3.
What there is left ? What did they brought ? The Institute, the Talon Mercenaries, the regulators, the brotherhood outcast and a whole lot of plotholes ?
Everything else is Black Isles/Obsidian stuff.
So basically, they used a completelly preexisting setting, but they owe absolutly nothing to those who created it ?
I am not saying that they should kiss Obsidian feet everyday (maybe they should...) but they owe definitally far more to them than the opposite.

I don't think you understood what I meant. Of course the setting and the creatures and whatnot were all from the Fallout world. It was a Fallout game. I'm saying the success of TES shows that Bethesda is perfectly capable of building their own game without having to fallback on just buying an old title to sell games.

Using the Transformers movies for an example again... Michael Bay didn't have to make a Transformers movie to make money. Michael Bay was already a successful (unfortunately) director in his own right. It's not like he was a lesser known directory who needed to make a Transformers movie so people would come see it because it was about Transformers.

I love how you keep telling me that the only problem with Vegas is that it forces you into the main quest but completely ignore the fact that F3 was full of plot holes, stupid references and recycled events.

And I love how you guys always completely ignore the fact that these things were recycled on purpose. They didn't put Super Mutants in the game because **** you fans. They put Super Mutants in the game because they wanted to be able to present them to you in a 3D manner and show what they could do with a 3d engine. The real mistake they made was choosing to set the timeline at 2077. 200 years after the bombs went off, realistically civilization should be well on its way to being rebuilt. They have earth moving machines in NV. They have Vertibirds they took from the Enclave to move people and materials. They started building their agriculture before the Vault dweller leaves Vault 13 in 2161. You shouldn't see a bunch of boarded up buildings everywhere you go in the Mohave. At least seeing DC as a ruin makes sense since the SM's are keeping people from rebuilding. What's the excuse for New Vegas? Because both Obsidian and Bethesda made a decision to stunt regrowth because a rebuilt civilization wouldn't be a Fallout game anymore.

Oh yes, it's the government that nuked the world, by the way that everything played out, both sides had no morals, the only thing they were concerned about was making money and having enough energy to sustain THEIR country, they did not care about operatives lives, they wanted to win at any cost, so a few lives for the lives of many will be nothing for the GOVERNMENT, the family, friends, other relatives would of course be devastated.

You seem to have this strange idea that "nuked the world" means that every single building on the planet should be nothing but ruins. Even assuming that all the nukes were as powerful as the one that took out Hiroshima, do you know how many nukes that would take to totally obliviate the entire face of the US? This was completely inconsistent even in the original F1 game. When you watch the intro you see the husks of skyscrapers left after the bombs went off, but when you play in game I don't remember any building taller than 2 stories (probably because of the top down view.)

 

[naossano]

I think the Cathedral, in Los Angeles has more than two stories up. (not counting underground levels)

Actually, one of the things that doesn't seem right in Fallout 3, but is not amongs the thing i hate the most, is the feeling that the destructions were not caused by nuclear strikes. I my opinion, nuclear strikes should a very few impacts, but very very large ground zero. It would be more believable to have four or five really big crater that cover the whole city.

Instead of this, it seems that they were many planes that lauch little regular bombs in the city, like the blitz in the WW2. What we see in Fallout 3 is more like each individal building got his own little bomb, that broke a few windows, sometimes one wall, and once a while some entire stories.

It seems unlikely that the US would let chinese planes flight all the way from the west coast to the east coast, to launch their little bombs in the federal capital.

The only reason i don't mind much about this is that i see it as a scenery issue and i almost don't care about scenery. I play Fallout games for the writting, not the color of the walls.

 

[lujo]

Again, just because you didn't like a game doesn't mean it wasn't a success.

-.-

Me liking or not liking it doesn't matter in that equation at all. You are talking about a game being a sucess, and I'm telling you that your parameters for success are rather suspicios, and that you may be seriously missatributing the cause for success of the games YOU like, while having little to no perspective into any factors but the select few you care about.

1) I'm not saying Oblivion was a dumbed down version of Morrowind, and I find it shocking that Skyrim is being called a dumbed down version of Oblivion as "dumber than Oblivion" would make something a thematic screensaver. There is only so much simple you can do, and if someone claims Oblivion is superior to Skyrim he is talking through a large nostalgia filter. Oblivion was nothing special, except if it's the only fantasy game you've ever played, Skyrim can only be just more of the same except whoevers playing it got all it can possibly offer from Oblivion so it seems more shallow than Oblivion did.

2) Oblivion was not "dumb" it was just mostly unimaginative and boring, same old baseline fantasy which gets called "fantasy" for no good reason. The precise word for it is "derivative", I think. But that game didn't sell itself, what sold it was the reputation that the company had for making Morrowind. And that reputation was mostly earned because Morrowind decidedly WASNT cookie-cutter - it's wasn't very deep when it comes to character interaction, and the quests where rather simplistic - but at a time isometric rpg's fully devolved into Icewind Dale and Neverwinter nights kind of deal, games for schoolkids and immagination-amputees, Bethesda delivered something which showed that you could do fantasy in a simple but aestethicaly and visually attractive way. In fact, that's what Bethesda stood for once. And that rep got legendary, because there was very little competition. By the point Morrowind rolled out there was so much cookie-cutter crap (Oblivion/Skyrim of yesterday) that people who didn't give a rats ass about graphics were thrilled.

3) Now, since Morrowind wasn't a very "smart" game to begin with, it had comparatively little ways to screw up. If stuff looked good and wasn't "medieval style eourope" kind of deal, it could get away on charm, graphics and ambience. There's very little writing that could be controversial, there's no companions, the core gameplay is hack and slashy and the system is unbalanced by default as the system isn't so important. You'll max out everythign eventually and all that. Every other game which tried to take the loose concept of a fantastic RPG in non-cookie cutter direction fell apart on technical and development grounds because it's, contrary to what you may believe, harder to pull off. Planescape Torment got saddled with a very wrong engine/interface so they had to rush it and it came out half done. Fallout 2 had the same problem, only it's user imput scheeme was simpler so it aged better. VtM: Bloodlines had a terrible engine and was also came out half-done. Morrowind didn't screw that up as it's much more of a bare bones game, so it came out the way it was ment to come out right off the bat - so at that point TeS were pretty much the only franchise which broke the unbelievably stale mold of how RPG's and "fantasy" presented itself. THIS is where they got the rep for their games being legendary - they actually put something immaginative on the market with the funds that caused any studio which tried to make a decent RPG to fail and not be able to finish the product before release. They did do it by "cheating", as the game is a grindy vacation simmulator, but it wasn't set in Forgotten Realms, so it was a huge breath of fresh air.

4) What happened with Oblivion is that a ton of people bought it thinking it would be a followup to Morrowind. And everybody and their grandma at least tried Morrowind and could see why it was standout - it was very different than anything else. So Oblivion sold a lot more copies than it would've if it was being put out by a random company - in fact, it would've probably been a flop. However, anything Bethesda put out after Morrowind would've been a "sucess". Even Oblivion - a complete opposite of what they were at that point legary for, which is, when you get down to it, just art direction. It doesn't matter if someone liked it on it's own, fact of the matter is that TeS were at one point the byword for "groundbreaking" and "unbelievable" and took an art direction decision strongly towards "bland" and "derivative". Which is why sales figures don't matter the least bit - just about everyone would buy the next TeS game once it came out. Word of mouth on the franchise was strong enough, all the cool kids would've been playing it, and with these big games - if you don't play it you're out of the social loop. In todays terms, if everyone is tweeting or filling facebook with Skyrim statuses, a lot of folks will check it out to see what all the fuss is about. And the TeS series is still living off the old glory it had at the only point when they weren't what they are now. You can't get a refund on games, and you can't tell from the demo if a huge open-world game will all be crap. Heck, you have to put in quite a few hours before you decide that "wow, there really isn't anything here worth my time", and by that point you have to struggle against "allready being too invested" to really give up so you end up playing it to the finish even if you don't like it.


So it's not about me specificaly liking Morrowind, or disliking Oblivion. Those games could've been completely different in many ways, but the situation wouldn't change. Morrowind could've looked completely different - that's the point of being immaginative and non-derivative, as long as it wasn't a cookie-cutter 3rd edition D&D base setting clone, and playable, it would've still been hailed as the best thing since sliced bread. Oblivion, the way it was, a polar opposite, could've also been anything within very strict borders it set upon itself - there were a tons of games exactly like it, baseline D&D 3rd edition setting clones, it being in full 3d doesn't figure into it anywhere. But a company using the reputation of "not selling you an Oblivion" to sell you an Oblivion is just ridiculous. There was tons of shit like that out there at any given point! Morrowind sold impossibly well, what was the point of changing the formula so much? Anything they put out would sell like hotcakes, their rep was huuuuuuuge. So if they've killed the cookie-cutter approach with their previous game, why in the world ressurect it? Guys like you would buy anything with shiny graphics, you're not exactly difficult to please - and they had the formula which gave you guys what you wanted by default and guys like me enough of what we wanted to love them. Why compromise that? That won't pay off in the long run, they'll go down eventually. The guys who were doing "mainstream" "no-brainer-content-only-graphics" things with RPGs before Bethesda got taken out by THEM.

I don't think it's impossible to debate this with me - you just need a bit of perspective. If someone shows that they can put out a product that can please both people with some taste and criteria and people who are just mindless consumers, when so many others have failed, why should I respect them if they ONLY go for you guys?

 

[Mathius]

Me liking or not liking it doesn't matter in that equation at all. You are talking about a game being a sucess, and I'm telling you that your parameters for success are rather suspicios, and that you may be seriously missatributing the cause for success of the games YOU like, while having little to no perspective into any factors but the select few you care about.

Sorry, I didn't get a vote for game of the year in 2006, I don't write for all the magazines that gave it glowing reviews, I'm not responsible for all the 9/10 ratings that pop up when you take 2 seconds to do a google search, and I didn't even play the game until AFTER Skyrim, so I'm not particularly crazy about it because I can't play it for five minutes without thinking how much cooler it would be with Skyrim's mechanics. I don't have to like or dislike a game to see if it's a success because I'm not the one who determines it. The game received almost universally positive reviews and made a ton of money and that makes it a success. Not whether or not it passes Lujo's criteria (or mine).

I think the Cathedral, in Los Angeles has more than two stories up. (not counting underground levels)

Actually, one of the things that doesn't seem right in Fallout 3, but is not amongs the thing i hate the most, is the feeling that the destructions were not caused by nuclear strikes. I my opinion, nuclear strikes should a very few impacts, but very very large ground zero. It would be more believable to have four or five really big crater that cover the whole city.

Instead of this, it seems that they were many planes that lauch little regular bombs in the city, like the blitz in the WW2. What we see in Fallout 3 is more like each individal building got his own little bomb, that broke a few windows, sometimes one wall, and once a while some entire stories.

It seems unlikely that the US would let chinese planes flight all the way from the west coast to the east coast, to launch their little bombs in the federal capital.

The only reason i don't mind much about this is that i see it as a scenery issue and i almost don't care about scenery. I play Fallout games for the writting, not the color of the walls.

<shrug> I'm not an expert on nuclear weapons, but I do know that there is ground zero and then a massive discharge of heat and radiation pours out at a high velocity from that point. The white house was obviously a targeted area. It seems small in game, but when you consider the actual whitehouse is rather large and then take into account the size of the front lawn (of the real lighthouse) we're only seeing a small section of the whitehouse in game. Whether or not that is a realistic epicenter I guess depends on what you were hoping for. It's hard to accept the addition of the Fat Man, as canon, or even the Lonesome Road addition to New Vegas and then argue that the destruction at the White House should have been larger. Personally I would have been happier if the White House wasn't hit because it would have been a cool place to explore in game, but that's just me.

You also have to consider two other factors... the Mutants would have contributed to a large part of the destruction and also, there would be other factors not relating to the bombs going off. In 200 years a lot of devastation can take place without the aid of bombs and we don't really know what the state of the DC area was when the bombs dropped to begin with. I have to assume that there would be a certain amount of vandalism and riots, and just who built the fortifications in the mall? The Mutants?

Some things from wikipedia on the subject:

Again, it is helpful for understanding to emphasize that large single warheads are seldom a part of today's arsenals, since smaller MIRV warheads spread out over a pancake-shaped destructive area, are far more destructive for a given total yield, or unit of payload mass. This effect results from the fact that destructive power of a single warhead on land scales approximately only as the 2/3 power of its yield, due to blast "wasted" over a spherical blast volume while the stategic target is distributed over a circular land area with limited height and depth. This effect more than makes up for the lessened yield/weight efficiency encountered if ballistic missile warheads are individually scaled-down from the maximal size that could be carried by a single-warhead missile.

Yields of nuclear explosions can be very hard to calculate, even using numbers as rough as in the kiloton or megaton range (much less down to the resolution of individual terajoules). Even under very controlled conditions, precise yields can be very hard to determine, and for less controlled conditions the margins of error can be quite large. Yields can be calculated in a number of ways, including calculations based on blast size, blast brightness, seismographic data, and the strength of the shock wave. Enrico Fermi famously made a (very) rough calculation of the yield of the Trinity test by dropping small pieces of paper in the air and measuring at how far they were moved by the shock wave of the explosion

It also lists about 10-15 different size nuclear devices that have been known to be detonated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_yield

Also, while I can't confirm how accurate these sites are, they have pretty similar information concerning the Little Boy and Fat Man blast damage radius:

In both cities the blast totally destroyed everything within a radius of 1 mile from the center of explosion, except for certain reinforced concrete frames as noted above. The atomic explosion almost completely destroyed Hiroshima's identity as a city. Over a fourth of the population was killed in one stroke and an additional fourth seriously injured, so that even if there had been no damage to structures and installations the normal city life would still have been completely shattered. Nearly everything was heavily damaged up to a radius of 3 miles from the blast, and beyond this distance damage, although comparatively light, extended for several more miles. Glass was broken up to 12 miles.

http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/MED/med_chp3.shtml

Blast Radius

The effect of the blast resulted in massive damage up to 1 mile (1.6 km) from ground zero. The radius for total destruction has been put at 2 miles or 3.2 km. The accompanying explosion sent shock waves that reduced edifices into shrapnel. The force was so great several houses and buildings imploded.
The Fireball

The size of the Hiroshima atomic bomb’s fireball was 1,200 ft (370 m) high. The temperature was estimated to be 7,200 F (3,980 C). Everything in the fireball’s path was obliterated. Humans were killed and cremated instantly, glass melted and sand was molted as well.
The heat was so intense shadows of people were embedded into buildings. In total, the Hiroshima fireball measured 2 miles (3.2 km) in diameter. This was very close to the damage blast radius size.

http://www.dimensionsinfo.com/hiroshima-atomic-bomb-dimensions/
</shrug>

 

[Alixen]

I agree that Fallout 3 should have probably been set prior or around the same time as Fallout 1, if only because of the state of the wasteland. However, I have a strange relationship with the game.

I didn't get into Fallout until the development trailers for FO3, as I was a console gamer, and was playing things like Zelda and Final Fantasy while many of you were enjoying the wasteland. Something I lament. Being years off release, I was inspired to play Fallout 1 and 2. I freely admit I got lost in 1 and never completed it, and Fallout 2 irritated me with how slow the combat was. I generally never stuck with it past the Den. Tactics at the time I couldn't get working. And then, when Fallout 3 finally released, I actually disliked it. The color tones were depressing, and the wasteland felt empty and lifeless. However, in these years I was in a depressive state.

Around a year later, I returned to the older Fallouts, and while never completing them I had a lot of fun just running around doing quests and talking to NPCs. Older and less in need of instant gratification, the combat became more interesting due to its tactical nature. (And damn you burst fire.) Finally, I tried FO3 again... and fell in love. The colors were drab, but there were also moments of beauty. The atmosphere sucked me in. The little callbacks to the older games made me smile. And then I got into the PC version, and mods, and I was truly lost.

Before coming here, the inconsistencies didn't stand out too starkly. And still don't really, as I believe many are down to perception. The bombs fell but there is still a city there... see the post above. Perhaps the wasteland around the downtown were flattened as intended with the Megaton nuke, which we see if we detonate it isn't a particularly destructive bomb for its size. Perhaps downtown was mostly struck with airburst, and the occasional small yield. As to the fact the wasteland is still full of supplies, and people don't plant farms, and so forth I rationalise that for the most part no one lives in the CW, heading north, west, or even south. There are only several settlements of note, with potential populations of a hundred or so outside game mechanics, and the population so sparse that they can be considered such when they are a lone man trying to get into the pants of a lone woman, or a family settled into a series of shacks. I imagine that for the most part the CW has been left largely un-scavenged until the Brotherhood turned up and made it more safe, and even then only the hardiest of wastelanders head out.

Not a perfect method, but it allows me to ignore the more jarring parts. These days i've completed all the games several times each, and Fallout 2 will always be my favorite. However, Fallout 3 manages to be my second favorite, just because I love the atmosphere, and exploring downtown, the metros, and Point Lookout. New Vegas follows it, but despite great characters and a decent story, it never grabbed me as hard as 2 and 3. I think because the world is starting to feel too civilized on the West Coast, even in the Mojave. Though I don't agree with Avellone that things need to be nuked again, they simply need to choose locations that have been affected less by the heroes, the NCR, or genius's who have managed to all but shield their small corner of the wasteland from destruction.

 

[TheChosen1]

I love how you keep telling me that the only problem with Vegas is that it forces you into the main quest but completely ignore the fact that F3 was full of plot holes, stupid references and recycled events.

And I love how you guys always completely ignore the fact that these things were recycled on purpose. They didn't put Super Mutants in the game because **** you fans. They put Super Mutants in the game because they wanted to be able to present them to you in a 3D manner and show what they could do with a 3d engine. The real mistake they made was choosing to set the timeline at 2077. 200 years after the bombs went off, realistically civilization should be well on its way to being rebuilt. They have earth moving machines in NV. They have Vertibirds they took from the Enclave to move people and materials. They started building their agriculture before the Vault dweller leaves Vault 13 in 2161. You shouldn't see a bunch of boarded up buildings everywhere you go in the Mohave. At least seeing DC as a ruin makes sense since the SM's are keeping people from rebuilding. What's the excuse for New Vegas? Because both Obsidian and Bethesda made a decision to stunt regrowth because a rebuilt civilization wouldn't be a Fallout game anymore.

Oh yes, it's the government that nuked the world, by the way that everything played out, both sides had no morals, the only thing they were concerned about was making money and having enough energy to sustain THEIR country, they did not care about operatives lives, they wanted to win at any cost, so a few lives for the lives of many will be nothing for the GOVERNMENT, the family, friends, other relatives would of course be devastated.

You seem to have this strange idea that "nuked the world" means that every single building on the planet should be nothing but ruins. Even assuming that all the nukes were as powerful as the one that took out Hiroshima, do you know how many nukes that would take to totally obliviate the entire face of the US? This was completely inconsistent even in the original F1 game. When you watch the intro you see the husks of skyscrapers left after the bombs went off, but when you play in game I don't remember any building taller than 2 stories (probably because of the top down view.)

And how do you explain the fact that the SM were complete pussies? And when talking about recycled events I'm talking about the fact that in the end, Beth took the whole Retrieve the Holy Geck idea and merged it with the We're Kicking you out of the Vault for your own Good and You Saved Us, Now You Must Leave Us. Also Vault-Tec somehow has access to FEV.

Nukes have a huge blast radius and should leave almost nothing behind, apart from a glassy crater.

 

[Alixen]

And how do you explain the fact that the SM were complete pussies? And when talking about recycled events I'm talking about the fact that in the end, Beth took the whole Retrieve the Holy Geck idea and merged it with the We're Kicking you out of the Vault for your own Good and You Saved Us, Now You Must Leave Us. Also Vault-Tec somehow has access to FEV.

Nukes have a huge blast radius and should leave almost nothing behind, apart from a glassy crater.

Mechanics, and the fact they weren't all that tough in Fallout 1, you were just squishier. In real time you can empty an entire clip into an SMs face in a tiny amount of time, and in the originals that could kill a basic super-mutant. I agree it would have been nice if things had been harder, and things made to seem tougher, and thus why I enjoy using FWE.

I believe they chose to merge those plot points into a larger story, a full scale war, to try and give nostalgia to those who played the originals first. Obviously it didn't work all that well, but hey, it's a shame but not something that can be changed in hindsight. The fact they allowed Obsidian to make New Vegas perhaps warrants some leeway? After all, they could easily have kept it in house, like the Elder Scrolls (single player editions). FEV is an important thing, and clearly a different strain as we can see from the effects it has on the eastern mutants. It's not too outlandish that various sites were working on the virus from differing directions.

And I believe as is pointed out a few posts up, in the opening of other games, and Necropolis, there are plenty of ruined cities that aren't glassy craters in the older games. Sure, real nukes work differently. And real shotguns don't only liquify what they hit at short range when a magical crit formula is just right. Wearing leather will not give you a better chance at avoiding a beam of pure energy. Grenades and rockets don't knock people around a few feet, leave them bruised, and the scenery untouched. Radiation and its effects/damage are not fixed by an orange solution. It's all cherry picking. These things aren't like reality because mechanics/it would be dull, and as such the interesting option was chosen.

I agree there are problems and inconsistencies, but they are not insurmountable, and they aren't going to go away because we want them to. They also aren't nearly so terrible and huge as is often made out, perception only makes them seem that way.

 

[Mathius]

And how do you explain the fact that the SM were complete pussies? And when talking about recycled events I'm talking about the fact that in the end, Beth took the whole Retrieve the Holy Geck idea and merged it with the We're Kicking you out of the Vault for your own Good and You Saved Us, Now You Must Leave Us. Also Vault-Tec somehow has access to FEV.

Nukes have a huge blast radius and should leave almost nothing behind, apart from a glassy crater.

I explained the GECK idea in the GECK thread. I'm not going to do it again (or rather naossano did and I elaborated on it some.) As far as kicking you out of the vault, I'm not going to try to explain it. Does everyone you meet in your real life act rationally, politely, or treat you with respect? That's not the case in my life. Lucky for you if that's your experience. Every day I meet people who ignore me, judge me based on my appearance, or are just downright rude. I would expect nothing less from a video game if I were looking for realism.

I still don't even understand why the FEV thing is an issue. It was obvious to me from the get go. The Vault-Tec project was government funded. The government funded and regulated the FEV. Why can't you put two and two together? All Vault-Tec was was a series of experiments whether they be biological or social. I feel like I've said this before somewhere in this thread.

As far as the SM, that's your opinion. I thought Beth did a good job of making them scale with you. They're a bit of a challenge if you run into them very early, but you can still take them down with a shotgun because lets face it they're not too bright. But at level 30 a Super Mutant Over Lord with a Tri-Beam Laser or a Gatling Laser is still a challenge. Not to mention these are not the same Super Mutants from Fallout 1 and nobody was trying to pretend they were. If you read the in game computer files you would have seen that it was a totally different process than what was going on with the Master. And that's not something thats unreal either. It's totally normal in a scientific environment to have several different test subjects with very stages of research and you generally want to isolate those test subjects as well as have a pure sample somewhere of whatever it is you're working with.

What should really be bugging you is how did Dr. Lesko get hold of the FEV to mutate the Fire Ants?

 

[TheChosen1]

Giving something tons and tons of health does not make it harder, it just means that you have to waste more bullets on it, same goes for Albiny scorps and Reavers.
It's not the FEV that bugs me, it's the fact that Vault-Tec were trying to make super soldiers or nothing at all (Vault 101, vault 112).
Lesko was going to be my next argument.
As for the vault kicking you out, the citizens should've first asked themselves who is armed to the teeth, wears power armor and has a Star Paladin following them, I'd start thinking rationally after that. Also apparently being the son of an idiot who tried to argue with people in power armor (doesn't that seem familliar) is enough for a Star Paladin to start following you, but not enough to get you into the Citadel.

 

[Mathius]

Giving something tons and tons of health does not make it harder, it just means that you have to waste more bullets on it, same goes for Albiny scorps and Reavers.
It's not the FEV that bugs me, it's the fact that Vault-Tec were trying to make super soldiers or nothing at all (Vault 101, vault 112).
Lesko was going to be my next argument.
As for the vault kicking you out, the citizens should've first asked themselves who is armed to the teeth, wears power armor and has a Star Paladin following them, I'd start thinking rationally after that. Also apparently being the son of an idiot who tried to argue with people in power armor (doesn't that seem familliar) is enough for a Star Paladin to start following you, but not enough to get you into the Citadel.

Yes because Fallout 1 and 2 had brilliant AI. Now you're just nitpicking. And running out of steam in the process.

 

[Buxbaum666]

Exploring the downtown DC ruins was FUN.

Were we playing the same game? Didn't you complain about railroading and invisible walls in New Vegas? Getting through DC was the most boring, tedious railroading experience I have ever experienced in any game. Invisible walls everywhere and there was exactly one path through it.

There's nothing to explore in a traditional RPG because the graphics don't pull you in at all. There is no realism to it. You can't overlook the fact that you're staring at pixelated beings.

Speak for yourself, man. You are obviously projecting your limited imagination on others. That's like saying books are crap because there are no pictures, there's no realism to it. You can't overlook the fact that you're staring at words printed on paper.

You seriously act like there's some conspiracy against turn based games and that people are dying to play them, they just don't know it yet.

There sure are enough people who are willing to make isometric and/or turn based non-console RPGs a reality.

That was 17 years ago. Graphics were crap back then. The best they could do was Goldeneye and Tomb Raider or something cut scene driven like Riven. And the cut scenes from those types of games were considered cutting edge. You can literally play Fallout 1 on a cell phone now.

I thought you aren't a graphics whore? It is painfully obvious that you are more interested in graphics than gameplay, story and writing.

That's your problem. You're only interested in what YOU want.

Unlike you? Ha.

Even if someone were to make another turn based fallout, people are not going to pay full price $60 at launch for it with inferior graphics.

Logical fallacy: turn-based equals "inferior graphics".

By the way: Diablo III, a game with "inferior" isometric graphics, sold 3.5 million times on the first day of release.

Please. Warnings in video games are laughable. You're the hero. You're supposed to be able to do things other people can't.

Ha, right. You're the "hero" so defeating death claws and super mutants should be a cake walk. Even in a supposed RPG at a low level.

Sorry, I didn't get a vote for game of the year in 2006, I don't write for all the magazines that gave it glowing reviews, I'm not responsible for all the 9/10 ratings that pop up when you take 2 seconds to do a google search, and I didn't even play the game until AFTER Skyrim, so I'm not particularly crazy about it because I can't play it for five minutes without thinking how much cooler it would be with Skyrim's mechanics. I don't have to like or dislike a game to see if it's a success because I'm not the one who determines it. The game received almost universally positive reviews and made a ton of money and that makes it a success. Not whether or not it passes Lujo's criteria (or mine).

(Mainstream) gaming journalism is broken and corrupt because it utterly depends on big publishers to survive. Oh, you gave Fallout 3 a 5/10? Good on yer, now say goodbye to our advertising money and forget about getting an early look at any Bethesda game ever again. This is why you see reviewers who praised company A's game X in 2006 flip-flop in 2008 when game Y is released and it is now okay to mention flaws in X that were suspiciously absent in the 2006 review. Jeff Gerstmann was fired from Gamespot because he gave Kane & Lynch a 6/10.

 

[lujo]

^ The last one is so true, and the market generaly is so oversaturated with formulaic junk, that Yahtzee has made a career of actually saying what he thinks about games as if that's not a game reviewer's job but his "schtick" for being a media personality. -.-

 

[naossano]

What if they also paid some forum user opinion ?

 

[Mathius]

Exploring the downtown DC ruins was FUN.

Were we playing the same game? Didn't you complain about railroading and invisible walls in New Vegas? Getting through DC was the most boring, tedious railroading experience I have ever experienced in any game. Invisible walls everywhere and there was exactly one path through it.

There's nothing to explore in a traditional RPG because the graphics don't pull you in at all. There is no realism to it. You can't overlook the fact that you're staring at pixelated beings.

Speak for yourself, man. You are obviously projecting your limited imagination on others. That's like saying books are crap because there are no pictures, there's no realism to it. You can't overlook the fact that you're staring at words printed on paper.

You seriously act like there's some conspiracy against turn based games and that people are dying to play them, they just don't know it yet.

There sure are enough people who are willing to make isometric and/or turn based non-console RPGs a reality.

That was 17 years ago. Graphics were crap back then. The best they could do was Goldeneye and Tomb Raider or something cut scene driven like Riven. And the cut scenes from those types of games were considered cutting edge. You can literally play Fallout 1 on a cell phone now.

I thought you aren't a graphics whore? It is painfully obvious that you are more interested in graphics than gameplay, story and writing.

That's your problem. You're only interested in what YOU want.

Unlike you? Ha.

Even if someone were to make another turn based fallout, people are not going to pay full price $60 at launch for it with inferior graphics.

Logical fallacy: turn-based equals "inferior graphics".

By the way: Diablo III, a game with "inferior" isometric graphics, sold 3.5 million times on the first day of release.

Please. Warnings in video games are laughable. You're the hero. You're supposed to be able to do things other people can't.

Ha, right. You're the "hero" so defeating death claws and super mutants should be a cake walk. Even in a supposed RPG at a low level.

Sorry, I didn't get a vote for game of the year in 2006, I don't write for all the magazines that gave it glowing reviews, I'm not responsible for all the 9/10 ratings that pop up when you take 2 seconds to do a google search, and I didn't even play the game until AFTER Skyrim, so I'm not particularly crazy about it because I can't play it for five minutes without thinking how much cooler it would be with Skyrim's mechanics. I don't have to like or dislike a game to see if it's a success because I'm not the one who determines it. The game received almost universally positive reviews and made a ton of money and that makes it a success. Not whether or not it passes Lujo's criteria (or mine).

(Mainstream) gaming journalism is broken and corrupt because it utterly depends on big publishers to survive. Oh, you gave Fallout 3 a 5/10? Good on yer, now say goodbye to our advertising money and forget about getting an early look at any Bethesda game ever again. This is why you see reviewers who praised company A's game X in 2006 flip-flop in 2008 when game Y is released and it is now okay to mention flaws in X that were suspiciously absent in the 2006 review. Jeff Gerstmann was fired from Gamespot because he gave Kane & Lynch a 6/10.

If you have to take a bunch of my **** out of context to make a point, I really don't have much of a response to give you.

What if they also paid some forum user opinion ?

Yeah, they also bought 4 million copies of their own game just to make it look like people were interested.

 

[Yamu]

Just a reminder-- no double-posting, please. You can use the multi-quote function to reply to multiple users in one post.

 

[naossano]

They don't need to buy millions of copies themselves.
They only need to win the marketing battle, to make sure people buy it.
If 10 millions of people buy it, but only 1 milions like it, it is not a problem for Bethesda. Those who didn't like it paid too.
And amongs those who didn't like it, there are Fallout fans that could buy the sequel anyway for the sake of having the whole collection.
They could also place the same bet making people that never played Fallout 3 buy Fallout 4 because of metacritics and other stuff.

Also, the user opinion was a wrong choice of words.
You can't buy opinion.
What i meant in a semi-ironic stance is that, is that, indeed, many people could like it on their own.
Also, there are some people that try to defend it with some real point.
Others seem willing to almost attack those who didn't like it, at all costs, sometimes using arguments opposed of those they used before, just for the sake of it.
Sometimes, some of them seem to disapear, but soon, after, a suspiciously similar substitute register himself with a not so different username and resume when the previous guy started.
You have to wonder if they have any kind of money interest in that issue.
If not, they miss an opportunity.

Or we are so much stubborn that we sometimes become paranoid when we find something unbelievable.

 

[Buxbaum666]

If you have to take a bunch of my **** out of context to make a point, I really don't have much of a response to give you.

Well, isn't that a convenient answer. What of your asterisks did I take out of context?