Tigranes

Sure, but you'd be giving up the whole 'wandering big world' gameplay that is fairly fundamental to how the entire engine is built. Is it really worth it? Random encounters would be pretty poor in the FO3 engine as well, IMO - worse than SOZ. There just isn't a lot of tactical options, the AI is too idiotic and so forth to make closed map random encounters + on-the-map travel a viable alternative in terms of enjoyable game experiences, IMO. One clear advantage would be that they can add a lot of different locations without having to worry about bunched up maps or filling in all the space - BG2 like, we could just get the areas. I wouldn't mind that.

Sounds like TPB could use this as a reason to go to the European Court if necessary?

Shryke, did you encounter the ones giving out promotional coupons to the Mermaid at Courtenay Place last week? They thrust them towards me and I grabbed without looking, was pretty interesting We've got a pretty good Vector of Depravity going on now from Mermaid's, through that pill shop opposite the bungee jump, then to that rose-door place & fetish shop near the Architecture school. Good city.

I always failed to see why it was so important to have 'real life' scales and such. Who really cares if Washington & its outlying areas are not represented 'properly' in FO3, or if the gameworld doesn't measure up to the size of the real world? Do you really want a world which is as big as real D.C., and populated / balanced / scoped like a real world D.C. would be if bombed out? Pretty crap game. Or are some people really that desperate to see their neighbourhood in a game? Probably not, for most. I think expecting FO1/2 style map travel for NV is unrealistic, and would present a lot of problems. I'm still hoping that they will present a more developed and urban setting that makes it easier to populate the world the Bethesda way.

That's some beard right there.

Please note that while frank and harsh discussions about anything, including Obsidian itself, is not a problem, profane and/or excessive bashing of any game or company will incur my terrible wrath. Yes, terrible. Terrible things will happen. Groar.

Can Mac users play MOW once Mac NWN2 has been patched up, or is MOW simply incompatible? I don't really understand how the latter would be the case if the game itself is compatible...

It indicates that a product has managed to procure sales through a combination of factors, which includes marketing and advertising, its relation to other products released at the same time (or before), platforms, distribution technologies and performances, and product's features / 'quality' (the judgment of which is dependant on things like myths and widely held perceptions regarding things such as game lengths and difficulty, the cultivation of consumer desire on the part of the developer/publisher and the industry, etc). Of course Oblivion did something 'right' to get sales, as far as 'right' pertains to 'an action that delivers sales'... at its core that argument is either a tautology that says very little, or one that says anything that gets you sales is 'right' by definition. if that is what you / some of you are saying, fair enough, but I disagree wholeheartedly with that. Basically I'm trying tos ay that sales are not like a test score; they are not an impartial and immovable standard that rewards what is 'right' (and thus defines what is 'right'). Sales, and the choices of consumers, can and are manipulated, cultivated and thus engineered. It's just a (very important) consequence of a complex process and can't be used to so simply validate the quality of a product - again, unless you define the quality of a product as something that sells well (which is not the worst position in the world to take up, no). You can find solid arguments on various camps and positions in the big FO furore. The pity is that because of various factors, which does include the Codex's more 'vulgar' culture but also other things including Beth's style of moderation (which they are perfectly in their right to espouse), the Bethboard community has grown fairly insulated from some of the arguments out there, IMO. If New Vegas can mean some more communication and discussion between places like NMA/Codex, here and Bethboards then it'll be really good & interesting.

I've seen most of your examples and they were very nice; and FO3 was indeed much better than their previous attempts in what they did with holotapes. I think Beth do get credit for that. Rather, what they are criticised for is that these good 'subtle stories' don't build up to interesting things you can actually DO (it just boils down to shoot more idiotic, unimaginatively conceptualised super-mutants with a broken VATS system), and that the big stories just don't make that much sense (e.g. Main Quest). I personally was pleasantly surprised at all the small things Beth managed to put in various areas. That wasn't what Pidesco wanted though. You keep arguing against a fictional, imagined stereotype that just doesn't exist here in this discussion to validate Beth's approach... a validation that's not actually needed.

Obsidian forums have hardly seen a consensus regarding this. At any rate, those who did criticise FO3 as 'wrong' didn't do so because they thought the gameplay style was 'wrong', but because it was 'wrong' considering the original premise and intent of the Fallout franchise. Sales are not an indicator of quality. I bought Oblivion, I put 60 hours into it and I liked it for what it was. I bought FO3 too and thought it was a much better game. Doesn't mean I'm not going to criticise its flaws, and doesn't mean I'm going to subscribe to arguments like "it sold well so boo hoo to all the complaints". They both remain good products with serious, serious flaws. In any case, I think it is assured that to a degree, Obsidian will put their story-oriented approach into this engine and setting. There really isn't any technical issue with Gamebryo stopping them. I'm hoping for fewer, wackier, more complicated areas to explore, and also more creative uses of the engine such as seen in IWD2.

People buy games even if they are not happy with some of the decisions. It doesn't excuse the decisions. I do think that overall and on many counts FO3 was an improvement over Oblivion, and i was pleased tos ee that.

We are going in circles - as I have already said, the completist who does everything does not even factor into my argument at all. In fact, I'd answer you again, but I'd be saying the same thing as above - it's not a question of "who Beth is catering to", because the current pacing doesn't cater to anyone (except, I guess, people who like God Mode.) That would be good, and I think if NV is the more urban/developed setting as we expect, should fit in quite well.

No, there is pacing in Oblivion, in terms of the gameplay experience. Late game Obv is distinctly different from early game Obv, though not in the same way that late game FO3 differs from early game FO3. But getting back to FO3's issue: Despite FO3 being a Beth-style 'go anywhere' big open world, some level of prediction and pacing is possible (and indeed necessary, as we can see now). If a player scours every inch of the map then complains the main quest is too easy (or vice versa) then that is really not the developer's problem, no; but that level of pedantry would be idiocy on the part of the complainer and thus not so relevant to us. OTOH, if players who quite 'naturally' follow the main quest hints with predictable levels of wandering and find themselves whack out of sync there is definitely a design problem. It's not a black and white matter and the openness of Beth's games doesn't and can't excuse them of the need to reach a reasonable level of consideration for issues of pacing. Except if that was the case, you would experience the 'right' pace if you just followed the main quest while getting lost a few times, checking out things a few times, but by and large leaving things be. But this is not the case. As I keep saying, if Beth did all this and succeeded in catering to a particular demographic, cool - that's simply a design decision and style that can be debated on. But at the moment it's really.. just broken for any demographic. Finally: This doesn't make sense to me - if you want to make a shorter game because you think people want this, sure, make a short game. But if you're going to make a LONG game, then you pace it appropriate to your own length. People who can't/won't finish your long game will simply experience early and mid game up till the point they quit. Or should people who only want to play 10 hours be allowed to experience late game FO3 as well? That's not really a logically sound design decision. FO3 has such a rapid scale either because of problems in the development process (e.g. while modifying encounter frequencies, experience point gains, power of perks, accuracy rates from your SPECIAL stats/skills, etc), or because of an indefensible design approach that somehow wants most people to become Godlike much too quickly in comparison to the content available. Once again, I stress, this is not about people who complete every quest and go everywhere. FO3 SPECIAL, and things like Fat Man, 'cheating' VATS and Bobbleheads, give you a tremendous amount of power no matter how you play.

The problem is not of fast v. slow pace. The problem is that the levelling (and thus xp / power balance, etc) are out of sync with the amount of in-game content there is, and the speed with which players normally progress through them (and the main quest). This is a basic problem, and it is an undeniable flaw (whereas a fast-paced or slow-paced game balance would be a stylistic decision). A true 'buffet' as you describe it would be a large game with an actually proportionate and consistent pacing. The complaints regarding Oblivion were rather different; most people were not so bothered by the fact that the game worked to challenge you at all levels, but they were bothered by the immersion-breaking, illogical encounters and loot tables (and also by the fact that, as in FO3, you quite quickly became a God of All Proficiencies.)

FO and FO2 were smaller in terms of in-game content, though. The levelling speed should be judged in relation to the projected number of hours to finish a standard playthrough. Without becoming too pedantic, you mostly played FO and FO2 without undue grinding or skipping and would find that you would approach the higher levels as you neared end-game; with FO3 you would have half the game remaining to be played as an all-powerful God (especially since the SPECIAL is much more generous in FO3 and you are pretty much amazing from level ~12 onwards).

From the horse's mouth:

You'd hope that they'd have a slightly different approach to the storyline this time, now that it's the third installment. I liked how LoD changed things a bit with the whole 'barbarian invasion' stuff, even if in the end it was just a regicide mission like all other.

Crap, now I'm in a dilemma. I really really wanted to buy Westgate to show my support for Ossian because I like 'em and they've been shafted pretty bad by the whole debacle. Groar.

I've hardly played in weeks, which is unusual, but life intrudes. The IWD2 playthrough slowly rumbles forward, but the game is a lot easier than I remember it. My inability to squeeze the munch out of 3rd ed rules always meant my party would be crippled in various ways, making even the Core difficulty a challenge sometimes (I think I even had a party that couldn't touch Sherincal). By now that's not the case, so maybe I'll try and crank it up.

I'd put my money on the FO3 model of New Vegas taking up a lot of room, and then with some outlying areas... but with the differences that 'New Vegas' might well be much more vibrant and developed (a la San Fran/New Reno) than the pile of rubble that was D.C., and so this 'new urban' area is the point of the game. It would make sense with the title, and differentiate the experience from walking over some more brown-grey rubble. edit: Fo3, Morrowind and Oblivion were all massive. I wouldn't really say that's the issue. In terms of what you experienced there was a game-wide, fundamental difference in the way Morrowind perceived you as an entity within its gameworld and Oblivion did, for example.

There are many precedents for releases such as this, and it will probably be full-priced, gameplay length/scope slightly smaller than original FO3 and bearing no relation in terms of story, etc. I'm anxious to learn what they want to change with how the game works though - i..e dump VATS? More crafting stuff? More faction-y stuff?

Rome did fix naval invasions eventually; a greater problem was the fubared landbridges. And ETW *should* have 'rewritten' the engine. What I've really wanted them to do with 3D ever since Rome is a completely different and more advanced concept really - the ability to actually build fortifications on 3D maps and really have supply zones, chokepoints, fortifications and merchant routes that make sense; imagine the CA campaign map being, say, 2-3 times as large (and thus encompassing a smaller landmass, we have too much already anyway), then being able to build walls, markets and such Age of Empires-style. Then have battle maps correspond to this. It would be a much more complete integration of campaign and battle modes, a proper use and reason for going 3D, and a lot more fun to boot... oh well.

ETW still hangs in the balance - i.e. will CA actually fix the naval invasions and make the AI a little more dynamic? That's really all they need to do - then within the next 6 months we will see mods for diversified units, better unlocked factions, battle balancing and proper family trees. If such things turn out as projected ETW will easily be the best TW game. For now? I had the most fun playing MTW1, but those graphics can be hard to look at now. Can't comment on the latest MTW2 mods but I'd take MC's word for it.

I used to love sporks until I realised humans are ambidextrous.

Please send Pidesco your best pics and we'll take it into consideration. He's got the thickest skin.