Yellow said:
I think a better version of "bleak humor" would be stumbling upon a classroom with 30 skeletons hiding beneath the desks.
I'm appalled that I'm the only person yet to respond to your idea; it's brilliant. Awesome irony, great job.
But of course Bethesda cherishes the lives of children above all other principles, so we'll never see it in FO3.
I can't stand Oblivion, but Morrowind still interests me, however solely as a timesink which I would only indulge in perhaps 1-3 hours a month. I just haven't had the time to get XBox-compatible mods sorted for it, and I don't want to start it until I do. I couldn't stand the computer version because the Wiki-dialogue font was so small on my high resolution screen that it was a chore to read through. If there were a mod to increase its size, I'd try it again on the PC perhaps. As for the merits of the game itself, there was little that I was impressed by apart from the sense of exploration and the difficulty of acquiring sufficient funds to buy nifty shit.
That having been said, I like Daggerfall in most regards, but I've a heck of a time finding my way around - because the graphics are necessarily in low detail and much pixelated, it's hard for me to really tell if I'm going somewhere I haven't yet been - or somewhere I want to go in any case.
But back to the topic -
Somehow, I hadn't heard that there was going to be a lockpicking minigame in FO3 - I had thought Beth would get rid of it. Odd, isn't it, how they acknowledge the problem with level-scaling, but then stubbornly cling to other mechanics and designs that received just as much criticism from players? Not to mention that everyone hates similar minigames in other action-RPG's too...
The fact that Beth's "core" for FO3 consisted of visceral gunfighting ought to immediately betray their true aim for the game. Todd is quite sensitive about the lack of "action" in his last two TES games, and, still carrying a torch for his Terminator days, is doing his utmost to impress in that regard with FO3.
Skill affecting damage is the least logical effect possible. Reloading, rate of fire, accuracy or stability (that is, accuracy over the course of bursts or full-auto fire, or the extent of recoil or "kick" after a single shot) rate of deterioration or repair, etc., all would've made some sense, and I do think I recall reading somewhere before that skill will in fact have a slight effect on a few of those categories. But, judging from the interviews and Q&A, by far the greatest affect of skill is to damage, which is just ludicrous.
I think that the fact that they had to resort to this particular mechanic is a good indication that the combat system is shallow; that is, because of the FPS-style controls, combat is so "easy" now (as compared to stat-checks and random rolls) that the only way they could make stats of some value was to cause those stats to relate directly to one's capacity for lethality
in the terms of the classical mechanics of FPS gameplay. Meaning, where Deus Ex 1 strayed from FPS mechanics for the sake of RPG-like influence, FO3 is tending instead to use RPG influences to exaggerate otherwise unaltered FPS mechanics.
We already know, for example, that by bringing up your ironsights you will negate almost entirely any penalty to accuracy (strange that in so many interviews that fact is neglected). I suppose this is Bethesda's way of "doing what they think is cool" from STALKER - but it breaks their system, as has been pointed out before. If they're QA team could play through the game without using VATS, then it can't possibly be as "hard" to do so as Todd insists. This means that VATS is just candy, just show, hardly a combat equalizer. And because Beth insists of maintaining FPS control and feel, there's nothing else for stats to have a big effect on apart from damage, which turns skill into little more than a constant-effect damage powerup.
"Bethesda settled on a system where your level considerably affects damage but only marginally affects accuracy. At low levels your bullet spread is larger than you'd find in a regular first-person shoot-'em-up, but as you grow, your accuracy will sharpen and your death-dealing power will increase."
How can anyone write, in a mere two sentences, two sentiments diverging so extremely? At first, the effect on accuracy is downplayed as much as possible and, when taken in combination with other information we've been given, seems to assure us that accuracy will not be significantly affected. In the second, however, it is the exact opposite that stressed - but in the terms constituted by the preceding statement, it has no foundation; it is preemptively negated. And yet there it is - conceived, written and printed. Mind-boggling...
Again and again, I see Todd delighting in malign glee at the fact that FO3 will consist of hundreds upon hundreds of gory cutscenes in the form of VATS. What kind of human intellect could possibly be entertained by that sort of thing, when repeated on the timescale and at the intensity that he indicates it will be? Astonishing...
"Another example of bleak humour: in an unopened post box you can find a letter informing the receiver they weren't selected for the vault programme."
Another NMAite writes that it would be funnier and more ironic if the letter said that they HAD been accepted. I propose that it would be even funnier still had the letter apologized for the "delay in the mailing system" -- and been clutched in the hand of a skeleton in a tattered bathrobe.
Finally, I can't fathom how the defenders of Bethesda can still rationalize the direction being taken for FO3 on the basis of "technological upgrades" and "modernization" when every single statement from Bethesda makes it abundantly clear that they did not approach the development of FO3 from the standpoint of how to improve on the Fallout series' own qualities, characteristics and mechanics, but instead wholly with the notion of squeezing FO3 into the conventions, restraints and systems of Bethesda's own most recent games. By definition, it is not an upgrade, but rather a conversion.
Please smoke pipe tobacco; the industry needs your patronage.
