Tigranes

I forgot about Redguard & co., but am I missing something here?

You powergamer JE Whoever wrote the main story deserves fifty thousand kicks in the nads, but I assume we're all done with cursing it, so I'll just say one thing. when you persuade Eden to self-destruct... the science option? I mean.... come on. To balance it out, though, I really liked Fort Constantine (pity you couldn't target the missiles, to my knowledge), Tenpenny quest was great (again, except they didn't flesh out Alistair), and some of the touches on those 'half-novelty' areas like Vault-Tec HQ and Nuka Cola factory were really enjoyable. Actually, I think I had the most fun in those kind of places looking at and doing wacky things.

Well, 35 hours in apparently, and I'm nearly at the point of no return for the main quest. I've got ~120 locations, probably a lot out there I haven't looked at, but it's starting to wear out now. The main quest is utterly retarded. There's no excuse for it. You can say the Water Chip quest in FO1 isn't so flashy or whatever, but no, this isn't even on that level. It doesn't make sense, you don't want it to make sense because there's nothing exciting about it, it's not emotional, philosophical or 'cool'... it's about as good as a rejected teletubbies show. Without going into spoilers (though there's no keeping yourself spoiler-free, because it's entirely devoid of any enjoyment), the entire project your dad is working on makes no sense and is impossible. And while it WOULD be important in the setting, FO3 does its best to convince you that it doesn't matter. Then, of course, it doesn't help that every single line from your dad is written like a hollywood B-movie and delivered with little passion, so you'd be embarrassed to care about it all. You have no reason to care and it doesn't make sense, anyway. I'd take the Morrowind main plot any day. Anyway. Yes, the Vaults were very nice. All in all there's a lack of polish and lack of depth, but there are a lot of interesting things in Bethesda's Fallout world. Simply pretend the main quest doesn't exist, and it stands up quite well. I'm debating how much time I want to spend finding other optional locations, since the combat is starting to get very boring and the architecture does get quite repetitive. We'll see. It's been a mostly good ride so far, though.

21.2%. Damn me.

It's cold, it's raining, it's windy and I'm stuck at work.

Oh, something that really should be mentioned is how Bethesda is improving on bugs. Morrowind at release was an absolute disaster (similar to NWN1), but Oblivion was considerably better as their second foray into 3D, and FO3 is generally quite good, with very impressive loading times. It does have several script errors that fail to fire and thus prevent you from finishing quests, but that is to be expected. I don't thinkt here are a lot of 'general' breakers out there. I just discovered the location of all the Vaults, and finally Dogmeat after 25 hours (I am doing things backwards!). Super Mutants are still boring thanks to the "AI", but it's good fun looking inside different Vaults. Well it's great that they have the intention, at least. But they did screw everyone over with their Molyneuxian "Radiant AI" hype before, so let's see what they do, first.

That's a lot of stuff in there DR, and each one could easily be a small mod on its own. Are you sure you're not doing your helium balloon thing again? Perhaps some of those ideeas can be combined into a single area. Yes, but you'll have to fight its terrible performance. Because it's so badly optimised, you'll just have to try running it and see - maybe you'll get lucky and it'll chug along okay, with no problems.

I refuse to pander to the facebook phenomenon of plastering blotched drunk faces all over the intarwebs! Also, apparently I can't incriminate myself, so yeah.

Dear Matthew, Summer isn't very good for me. Please stop making my life difficult. Love, Tigranes

Korea and China had a lot of traffic, and because of China's size and military might, they had a big influence on Korea during, say, the 10th to 16th centuries. e.g. Korean was actually a spoken language among the 'plebs' for centuries, until a King finally got down to making an alphabet, then converting the nation. Until then, everything was written in Chinese letters (or, uh, Kanji). Japan was *completely* secluded from the outside world for centuries, only being discovered by Chinese and Korean sailors... so Japan borrowed a massive amount of Chinese and Korean culture, though it still managed to branch out quite uniquely, for all that. Anyway. In terms of architecture? Quite similar. In terms of, say, clothing? Quite different, curiously (Chinese clothing had various external influences, such as the technically 'barbarian' occupiers in the 16th (?) century imposing those now-famous 'pigtails'). Pottery? Korean pottery was the pottery... in China. Since Japanese culture is much better marketed in the West (an excellent feat by them in the mid-20th century), I can say, Korean is as unique as Japanese is. It's going to appear similar, but lift the hood and there're a lot of weird things going on. All dates given are probably centuries off, and I forget all specific names. It's been a while. Second round of pics. That's probably all of the 'well-taken' photos. 1. There were four great gates around Seoul back in the days when people had walls. Two are long dead, and some hobo set fire to one this year (literally), so this is the only one remaining one. The East Gate. 2. In which Sun-ha visits street food vendors. They are awesome, if you know the right ones. 3. In Korea, you can pay to hit things with your stick. Two bucks. 4. Inside Gyung-bok Gung, since Steve has been there. The royal palace - the green trees pic was taken elsewhere within it as well. The palaces are quite different from Western ones. There are no 'high-rise' buildings; the outer walls are only about two metres tall, and inside are a number of sand courtyards separated by inner walls. Inside each courtyard you will have relatively small buildings, often only the size of one or two rooms. The point was that living quarters and kitchen and so forth are all in separate buildings, and buildings, if you could afford the land, weren't cramped together. So you had a lot of walking space and privacy. 5. Some crazy traditional Korean game that I've never seen before. Later, I conspired to hit those girls with my stick.

There's no new info about the first DLC, right? I am praying they actually plan some AI upgrades for all the combat... but if they didnt' do it between Oblivion and FO3, why would they start now?

And why would I do that? All you are doing is conveniently using that Moderator tag to pigeonhole me and then take pot shots - not unlike what you're doing with Josh. Please. All I am saying is that, in my opinion, your argument is needless and nitpicky. Josh ridicules those who don't like twitchy? Please, that's more sensitive than [insert non-PC stereotype here].

Aristes: yeah, there's a lot of non-story bits. I actually haven't bothered to go to the Minefield yet (I lied my way past that in the quest), but will check it out. I think its quite silly how they let you disarm a mine instantly though, if you hear the 'beep' you can just look down and spam E. Hey, free mine! Been avoiding doing that recently, quite fun having to jump out of the way hoping not to lose a leg. DR, I agree with you in general, I was just saying how silly it was to extrapolate JE's design philosophies from the way he plays FO3, which is already built to only allow certain types of play.

Yes, that is the artificial river. The graffiti says, tone preserved, "Korea is, like, sort of awesome". It was in the middle of a reputable arts / crafts centre plaza thing. Korean is phonetic, and in fact very logically constructed to be phonetic (benefits of a language whose framework was set up by one guy). Pink shirts are a sign of manliness and intelligence. Second round of pics tomorrow when I get around to it.

The point is that monkeyhopping on Josh's back for how he plays FO3 (a game already built in such a way) and extricating some elaborate state-of-the-industry out of it lacks logic and sense. Fallout 3 is built in a certain way. Unmodded, it very clearly gives advantage, both in terms of competitiveness and convenience, to either VATS or real-time in certain situations. There's no way to pursue the 'pure CRPG' combat play that Gromnir is pounding fists about within the game, so whatchagonnado? I do keep thinking how much I'd prefer FO3 combat with isometric TB, but that doesn't mean I'm going to try and play it like isometric TB while I'm in the game. That's an exercise in futility. Anyway. I've found about a hundred locations, and well.... FO3 doesn't give you too many quests, does it? I've run out and now I have to go find dad, it seems. I just heard you get railroaded once you do. 23 hours in and the wasteland is starting to, very slightly, lose its charm, though. edit: oh, its Dioooogo! It's always been 'legitimate'. We could devolve into an eternally unresolvable WHAT IS RPG dance-round-the-campfire, but you know, it's always been a legitimate model of gameplay. Many gamers enjoy it, and many gamers are able to identify with their characters and not worry at all about the curious merge between their aiming skill and that of, say, J C Denton's. If you are saying this in terms of the traditional Western CRPGs in the tradition of Fallout, IE games and so forth, well, in so many ways, Bethesda diverged from that line a long time ago. Someone who doesn't know the history will come and play FO3, and associate it with Oblivion, Stalker or whatever, rather than FO1/2, simply because of visual style, presentation/delivery, etc. So I don't think FO3 is that relevant or powerful. Certainly, some morons in the world of 'journalism' and in the public will continue to claim how FO3 shows that no game should ever EVAR be TB, etc, etc, how every game should follow FO3, but... y'know. I think the point I'm trying to make is that FO3 appears sufficiently different to the average gamer, so that rather than associating itself with traditional tactical western CRPGs and dragging them along its path, it's sort of the black sheep, and is more likely to influence games in the other side of the spectrum. After all, games like King's Bounty, MOTB / SOZ and so forth didn't worry about Oblivion.

Because the type of people who might appreciate this are the type of people who would never look at a Settings file in their life, and would sooner buy a new computer. Thankfully, my brain automatically anticipates them now.

Not a lot, as I don't take kindly to cameras and most of them have me looking like I've just been to the gulag Now Shryke can assassinate me one lonely night. 1. Chung Gye-Chun, a newly constructed waterway in the heart of Seoul. 2. Inside Gyung Bok-Gung, one of the major palaces in past Korean kingdoms. A walkway inside, really. 3. Some cathedral in Jun-ju, apparently pretty darn famous. Deserves to be, too. 4. In which Sun-ha shamelessly exposes graffiti! 5. In which Sun-ha has a crippled arm, but is out of stimpacks. 6. In which Sun-ha celebrates phallic symbols. Same place as (1). 7. What a tree, Humbabaloo

Hrm. Does anyone have an idea for a flick I could send my parents to for Christmas? Was planning on Opera, theatre or classic/jazz concert but there isn't a right one at the moment, so a simple movie/dinner treat will have to do. I won't be going. Problem is, stepdad's a kind of dull fellow in that respect. Unlikely to go for anything too funny, too dark or too weird. Probably likes multicultural stuff, though. Any "steady ship" movie around?

Talk about spin doctorin'.

Really? If you sneak up behind them then get them in the head, it's a crit more than half the time, for me. Can blow out a Super Mutant Brute in one shot that way with Psycho. Although, I do have the Finesse trait (NMA F3C mod). I was delighted to discover that those Mr. Handy/Gutsy models don't trigger mines, because they float in the air. Nice touch - took me ages to realise it.

Nope, haven't found that place, either. I think I've found all the 'towns' now, though - except the , which I know but haven't gone to yet.

So I did find the reservist's rifle, though I had to cheat it in after the sniping bastard bugged & disappeared on me. I also ran into the slavers and deathclaws last night. Deathclaws were easy at level 10, even with the NMA mod nerfing VATS... mainly because after you get your Small Guns up to about 75+, you can get 95% headshots with the scoped magnum from a reasonable distance. The first one I found I shot from an outcrop while iti couldn't pathfind its way to me, and the other two I sneaked & sniped. God bless Stealth boys. The game *was* damn hard until I reached that small-guns threshold (which is the same in FO1/2, I think its a SPECIAL thing), but while half the time it was an enjoyable challenge, the other half was... Super Mutants going RGAH CHARGE. I found though, after doing the key quest, and that was really nice. It was the first extensive quest that made a lot of sense in the way it came together since the one - most quests in FO3 are much more contained (do X to Y, and only we will ever know and it ends here). I was really disappointed you couldn't do more with the clues you found though. Am I missing something, or, I had really thought that was what was after.... firing it somewhere. Instead, he just wanted the ? Guh. Anyway, still haven't seen Dogmeat.

Haven't found either yet. I think I'm doig it weird, cause I haven't seen Dogmeat either.

Tagged bits are mild spoilers, as usual, nothing big. 20 hours in and haven't lost interest yet. I think I've explored 2/3 of the map, leaving out the northwestern quadrant and some pockets, but there're probably areas I've missed. I just hate exploring in D.C. now because of all the metros, blockage and super mutants on crack. Level 10 with a good cashflow and good weapons going, and combat is still decent (after KOTOR, nothing is a borefest), but I'm really really sick of Super Mutants now. Unlike most other things you can't snipe at them from a distance, so all you can do is set up mines, wait for them to run in (Radiant AI being so smart), then VATS-shotgun them to the face. If you miss, you die. It's a lot more fun when Raiders in buildings move around... the sniper was great because of all the traps and such. Lobbing pulse grenades all over the place inside the was nice too. Dialogue and quest design is still fairly good without being polished or tyte. I am amused at how one of the most fleshed out, well delivered and well VA'd quests so far (the ) is also cliche enough to make Hollywood vomit. Just like with the Family, there was scope for some interesting explorations, but it was never taken up. Many of the towns are a joke, as tiny as they are ( ), which really contributes to how unrealistic the world is. I mean, completely separate from how it relates to FO1 or 2, the world just so does not make sense, and it screams that at your face as you play. What the hell are about six people doing living in the middle of nowhere with two brahmin, and why are they telling me "they have plenty of water and food" here? Why would three families live in the middle of a freaking ? Would it have killed to have some farms outside Rivet City, and maybe a quest where raiders attack the farm and the city has to decide whether to protect or to cut their losses and ? What about a 'second village' for Tenpenny full of 'second-class' citizens who farm for the main residents? Fun game, good game, but also lots of missed opportunities and Bethesda just can't shed its own skin. Or maybe, doesn't want to. Which isn't all bad. I usually finish games I get this far in, even if I hate them (Lionheart must be the only one I quit mid-way), so I'll probably see it all. Just going to abuse stealth boys and skip the Unlimited Mutant Supply.

Oh yeah, should post here too. HP dv5-1131tx Intel Core2Duo P7350 (2.0 GHz, 3 MB L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB) 3gb ram DDR2 320gb HDD 5400RPM GeForce 9600M GT 512mb (dedicated) 15'4" screen WXGA