Aristes

No, the dialogue has gotten to be fairly bad. It's not terrible, just innane. I don't think the written dialogue is particuarly bad, but the voice over work takes mediocrity to a new level of lackluster. The problem is that you really have to fill in the gaps. Since it's simply not feasible for Stahl to open up to you as quickly as he does, you're better off filling in some of the gaps. I have to say that, of all the aspects of Fallout 3, the dialogue is the worst so far. The mini-games aren't bad. The lockpick one is a pain, but the computer hacking one is simple but clever. The weapons are cool and I like the monsters. The setting feels right. I've enjoyed the quests so far. In fact, I've almost got the Family quest all done. Just one more trip. But that goes to highlight the dialogue, where some of the events clearly should have elicited a stronger and sometimes different response. Overall, I'm enjoying the ladykiller perk, mostly because, while the dialogue is goofy, some of the responses are kind of cool. The part with Bittercup was quite funny. Here I was thinking she was going to sleep with me when she pulls a rabbit out of her hat. Where she was hiding the damned thing on those painted on clothes is beyond me, but bless the depressed lass! The game itself is fun, and I've spent hours on it all tolled, but I agree with Pidesco about the dialogue. Not a lot of gems in that pile of rocks.

I'm just wondering why there aren't that many kids running around. you'd think the biological imperative to reproduce would be pretty hefty after an apocolypse but meh. of course with the number of rads that you get I'm just wondering if everyone is sterilized, (currently is passing the 400 mark because he hasn't been able to find his way back to a doctors house or anything while doing the main questline.) I was thinking the same thing. With the apparent 'respawn' rate, humanity should be pretty much dead by now. Where do little raiders come from? Spontaneous birth from the very waste itself? It's like in real life when I drive down the street and young thugs spontaneously spawn on the road. The drop a foot or two to the ground and start walking in random directions.

Haha I'm in the habit of playing what you guys post without really thinking about it. Turns out that I was on speaker instead of headset, so when I played thepixiesrock's song, it woke up my wife and I got busted. I guess I was also listening to it.

Les Yper Sound -- Stereolab (?) Anyhow, it's a cheerful little song. Some kind of European technostuff. A lot of beeps and chirps and whatnot, but it's not bad. Unlike the scary/funny wolf song, I might purchase this one. It's not my usual cup of tea, but I'm not comfotable sticking to my usual cup of tea all the time. This the best thing about this thread. I get ideas for song purchases.

Well, I'm actually just goofing around. I've killed dogs and literally looted some dog meat.

Fallout 3. I LIKES it!

Hey, I'm only at that little township place up north and I've already found dog meat.

Sympathy for the Devil -- The Rolling Stones Good tune. Damned rat bastard devil.

You know, I noticed the same glowy thing in the area outside the vault. It kind of looks like they did it on purpose to show a sort of stark, radioactive landscape. Inside Megaton isn't so bad and I haven't had time to play today so far. I'm looking forward to getting back to the game, though. I've just discovered something in the mainplotline. Using nothing more than speech, no less! :D

I don't like the way stats are so intrusive. I really don't like the fact that the game tells you that something is a speechcraft test and then gives you a % chance to succeed. I would rather have verbal clues and I would rather sometimes have those clues be misleading. For example, I think I'm really convincing this guy, but it turns out that I had missed my speecraft role only to find out at an unfortunate time. That battle was fought and lost a long time ago, though, so I can't really say it's a problem with FO3. One thing that strikes me, and this is complete irony, is the use of profanity. I have yet to encounter one use of profanity that feels natural in the game. Turns out, there is a lot of cusses cussingness in this game. The way it's written into the dialogue is okay, I guess, but the voice acting delivery just doesn't cut it. Now, there are two kinds of cussers in my experience. Some folks cuss as part of normal speech. They've grown up around folks who use profanity as regular part of speech, and it's no different and no worse that folks who use Valley Girl placeholder words (like, ya know, when they add 'like' to every sentence) or BillnTed speak (Duude, you know who I mean). That's f'n awesome is profanity, but it's not particularly profane. The other swearer is guy who uses profanity to express anger. I'm the second type. Generally, if I use anything beyond Disney profanity (Damn it, I don't count hell or damn) then I'm pissed and I'm letting you know how pissed I am by f'n telling you, b!t@h. Motherf'r! The problem is, the folks delivering the lines don't use them either way. They don't seem comfortable with them. I'm sure the actors cuss up a storm, but the voiceover characters sound uncomfortable. I thought it was kind of cute for the 10 year old girl to sound that way, but not the adults. When Stahl says something like, "Sure, I have all f'n day to stand here and tell you about the town. Go ahead." He sounds mildly peevish, but the f'n words don't sound either casual or angry. If I'd delivered that line, it would have sounded a lot more aggressive. The best person for swearing so far is Jericho, since he use the word @$$hole the way I say it when I'm angry. Which is to place the emphasis on the word 'hole.' As in, "What the f*** is your problem, @**hole?" Even then, it more or less sounds like he's trying to be insulting rather than actually being angry. The dialogue is the usual. One moment someone's angry and the next their okay. That's pretty common in these computer games, although I thought Jericho's dialogue wasn't so bad. At least I had to make a speech check to get him to stop calling me an @**hole every other sentence. That's the other thing, if I'm so angry at someone that I'm calling him a name every other second, we're either parting or in immanent danger of resorting to violence. The dialogue is not stellar, but the voice over work is downright mediocre. Now, that's not so bad. Generally, the voice over work for Bioware and Obsidian games has been good. I remember some points in NWN2 when I just thought the voice over work was horrible. I've rarely encountered a game where the voice over work didn't fail its speech check for some character or another. So, it's not so bad.

Okay, finally having looked at the Alan Wake webpage, I'm stoked! Awesome! This will definitely be on my list when it hits for the PC. Any details on a release date?

I dunno, I was supposed to save this old lady from a bunch of roaches, I went in bat swinging, and hit her in the noggin killing her in one blow, not intentionally, I guess I should have used the aiming system. After that the grease haired rocker outside, her son, who recruited me for this particular quest, seemed to be permanently stuck in a loop, going, 'hurry shes right inside there, hurry shes right inside there, hurry shes right inside there'. I decided it would be best to put him out of his misery. All in all I don't think they would be happy to see me. I don't suppose that tutorial stuff counts as a spoiler? I mean, it's right out the gate. Anyhow, I always like to play a smart, wise-cracking, science type. So, while I was tempted to shoot the young tough in the head, I decided to try to convince him to take care of his alcoholic mom himself. One of the things I don't like is that the speechcraft options show you your chances right off the bat. I see it a lot lately, but I've never liked it. Anyhow, I failed on a couple of check, so finally I convinced him to take my bb gun and go kill the roaches around his mom. He was quite happy and gave me his leather jacket. I got my bb gun back, looted roach meet (tastes a bit like lobster), and scored to ol' lady's vodka. All of that was quite nice. Of course, I would have done it just as fast by killing everyone and looting corpses, but Butch is a waste of bb gun ammo. I'm still wondering what this karma does in the game. It's probably in the manual, but since I downloaded the game, I'd have to look for it on my system.

EDIT: Aw, hell, what's the point in flaming folks. This is a game and I won't let it drive me to act like child picking fights on a playground. I'll edit out my more hostile comments, but I would like to keep one point. About the helpful information... You can use dialogue to bypass combat. There are swear words. The dialogue isn't stellar. It isn't completely terrible, but I haven't encountered anything memorable so far. So, what sort of useful information did you need? I've addressed tsome of he issues you cited in your earlier post. I could even post screenshots, but only in the spoiler area if someone wants to create a thread. I have to say, in all honesty, I'm not trying to convince you to either buy or play the game. I'm not. I'm trying to convey the idea without being insulting, but I really don't care if others play the game. I'm mostly responding to a lot of what others have said, and what they've said has come second or third hand. The folks who have actually played the game, of whom I am one, should be considered reliable sources unless you literally believe that we're lying. That doesn't make sense, but I'm sure that I'm not the only one who can show dialogue bypassing combat or people swearing (although I will continue to think that's a silly requirement anyhow). I don't hold it against you if you don't play the game, but I do think you should listen to folks who have played the game and can back up their claims before you trust second or third hand information that has already proved faulty. Mostly, Wombat, I'm replying to several posts throughout this thread. I've been lurking here for a while and feel like I know some of the folks already and I don't want to pick a fight with you or starwars. I'm simply saying some of the claims are simply unfounded.

The quest solutions might go south after the Vault, but I managed to use speech to my advantage almost immediately. I noticed some speech related options in other dialogue outside of the Vault. Currently, I'm in Megaton. So, I don't know about quest resolution throughout the game, but I can tell you at least one resolution doesn't seem to entertain the possibility of a combat resolution. I'll play more and I'll be brutally honest if there isn't some chance for non-combat resolution. However, if you create a slack jawed Yokel with low intel and charisma and high strength and endurace, with melee, heavy weapons, and energy weapons as your tag skills and bloody mess as your perk, well.... don't think you're clever when you say the game doesn't offer any non-combat resolution. I would probably have believed some of these claims if I hadn't witnessed the contrary aleady. The game might go downhill as I progress, but some of the statements folks have made are proved bunk in the damned tutorial. Things like profanity. What the hell? First of all, this is really a big issue for folks? How stupid can you get? Okay, so you think a setting can only be gritty if folks use profanity. Then the ten year old girl swearing in the tutorial, the the beggar outside of Megaton should count for something. Sure, the girl only says @$$, but she's ten years old. If a sheltered ten year old girl living in the vault started throwing around four letter words in every sentence, it would have been jarring. The beggar says s**t. Oh, I still haven't encountered the f-bomb. That must be it! Saying s**t doesn't count, but f**k does? Or every character should pepper every exchange with a large assortment of profanity? And not just in one language either, right? I mean, how puerile can you be? Being bombarded with swear-words is not fun or clever. Sure, use enough to get the point across, but don't beat us over the head with it. Profanity is really a deal breaker? I guess I've heaped enough scorn on that idea for the time being. ...And you know what sucks about all this, it just underscores how unreliable these outside reports are. You know, at least the regulars around here have to look out for their rep. If someone flat out lies about the game, then they'll have to face some serious accusations later. Now, to be fair, I don't think anyone here relies entirely on internet reviews. I wouldn't have gotten the game based on them, although the good reviews I've seen gave me some encouragement. I'm glad because I'm having fun after some hours of play. Even if the experience goes downhill, I won't hold it against folks like jaguars and Killian. Their reviews have been honest and I have not encountered anything so far that contradicts them. however, folks cite reviews that cannot be called anything less than either complete lies or rumor mongering to such an extent that it constitutes a lie by negligence. Good Lord, how shameless are people that they'll literally make these sorts of stupid lies? I mean, I'd at least expect folks to fashion clever, insinuous lies. I wouldn't expect them to lie about things that are proved false in the first half hour of play. I'm not going to go back over what folks wrote in earlier threads in regards to the game pre-release. ...But I think calling folks out for flat out lying is fair game. /nerd-rage rant Anyhow, Volourn or some someone can come put me down because I should have been wise enough to be entirely cynical from the very beginning. It's ironic that I doubt I would be defending Fallout 3 so strenuously if it weren't for the egregious nature of the complaints.

Played some Fallout 3. Good stuff so far. The dialogue is a step up from previous Bethesda works. The voice over talent runs from pretty good to sucks. At least it doesn't run from excellent to dismal like the last game. I haven't had to cringe yet. The graphics are pleasing, but the weird way the people hold their arms and hands is just goofy. Has a real Fallout feel to it, which surpises me greatly. It also has somewhat of an Oblivion feel to it, which doesn't. It's a good Oblivion feel, though. It looks similar in a lot of way, especially the goofy running animations and what not. I'm have a positive experience thus far.

Well, I've been playing nothing, but in about five minutes, I'm going to check in with the WoW guild and then dive into a new game of Fallout 3. Looks pretty damned good from what I've seen.

Great. You made me take the time to look up an article on him. On the other hand, thanks for forcing me to read up on him.

I'm not trying to pick a fight over the issue, but using called shots in Fallout did the exact same thing. If I just shot at the guy, it took longer to kill him. Once I upped my small arms or energy weapon skills, I could consistently hit with a called shot to the eyes and cut my enemies down like sheaves of grass. The fact that random crits made such a huge difference in the earlier Fallouts has been one of the most vigorous avenues of attack against the game. Seriously, having played the originals when they first hit the streets, I can tell you that it seems silly for ol' skool Fallout fans to go after Fallout 3 based on this unsubstantiated idea. Hell, you could crit on a miss and ice your own people if I remember right. At least, I think I can remember wondering why I bothered taking Ian into my party when he crit missed and blew me into a pile of assorted sized chunks o' Aristes.

I guess that was my point in regards to the original article. It offered no solutions. It simply said, we're using up the Earth's resources too fast. Okay, now what? Say we cut our consumption in half? Do we force women to have abortions also? If we're completely screwed because of our current rate of consumption, then we're pretty much screwed, right? Personally, I think it does come down to technology, but not for harvesting resources on Earth. If it comes down to making do with what we have, then there's nothing we can do in the long run. It's a numbers game, and, ultimately, the numbers are not in our favor. So, I'm all for technology. I don't have faith that we'll get enough of it in time, but I'm for trying. I hadn't thought of it as human hating, but I can see that description. According to that article, at the end of the day, anything less than complete reversal means that we're going down the drain. If it's not in 22 years, then it's certainly within a hundred, right? Essentially, there is absolutely nothing we can do short of ceasing to exist. Anything else is simply a stopgap measure. I really don't have a beef with the article, so much as I wonder how these scientists sleep at night because, from what I can tell, their outlook is completely hopeless.

Well, I finished the intro. I manually downloaded the latest version of Direct X *nods to alanschu* but I don't think it was the game. I think my antivirus caused a snafu, since it didn't work the first download and only worked on the second download after I visited Microsoft. First impression, just from the tutorial: 1) Character creation is awesome and I loved it. 2) The tutorial, like starwars says, is kind of cheesy. They usually are, but I think it's fair to say it about FO3. 3) The game looks and feels good and I'm seriously going to create a new character when I have time, which means going through the tutorial again, and start a real game. Overall, I'm quite impressed that is has a Fallout feel. No, it's not FO1 or 2, but it has all the trappings of Fallout. It does have a certain Oblivion feel to it, but that has not been a detraction so far. I guess the character animations do look a little... weird? but the scenery inside and just outside the vault is good. Some of the moral dilemmas show up immediately. I was assigned as Chaplain after my G.O.A.T. haha funny. I'm not going to write anything long unless I have some a completely different perspective, which seems unlikely at this point. So far, so good, but only past the tutorial so far.

Yeah, I think you'll be disappointed with the quartermaster gear. My guess is that they wanted to give 70s some incentive to get some epics pretty easy for environment stuff. If you do a lot of PvP, I don't think there's a chance in hell you'll want to switch out of BG/arena gear for why they give you for those runes. I'm primarily PvE and I'm struggling to decide whether I want to trade my merciless gear for the new gloves. Pretty substantial hit on stamina and all of the resil is gone, of course. You can make the trip, Gftd, but I'm pretty sure you'll think it's a waste of time. I might link the stuff later off of thott or something for you. Silly, the lock and rogue can't use the plate. ...and my tank wouldn't use it if it had dropped for him.

Yeah, in Light's Hope Chapel. Good luck, wading through the mass of 70s attacking the invasion points, but there seems to be more now also. I don't think you're going to find the gear all that exciting, but at least I might actually switch to one of their epics. Oh, and there's a "rare" undead spawn at some of the invasions. He dropped a pair of epic plate leggings for my sister and me. My warlock sister and my rogue me. haha

Oh, yeah, some of those problems with the intro are quirky. The problem with killing off the guards easy doesn't bother me, since it's a pretty common thing with tutorials anyhow. The idea that they're trying to find you and didn't thoroughly search your room would be pretty jarring to me. It wouldn't kill the game, but I would wonder about it. We'll see about the next install. It's almost done loading and I'll load it and play the intro just to make sure that the game works. If it is the installer, shame on you, Bethesda! No biggie as long as I can load it properly on the second run. I've had to reinstall several games because of one snafu or another over the years. I'm not ready to storm the barricades at the first problem.

I did a dxdiag and it said it passed, so I figured I'd give it another shot. What a pain. If it's Vista related, then I guess Steam and Bethesda get a pass.

I didn't read it because I as afraid of spoilers. I have to say, you guys have been great for not spoiling the game. Of course, I might actually be playing it, as unlikely as that is, if I hadn't needed to download it again because the first install didn't work. I kept getting a "don't have dx9_3something.dll" error. I deleted it and am downloading it again off of Steam. So far, that does not impress me. I want to have a good experience using Steam, but I don't know if this is a problem with the Download or the game at this point. Here's hoping. As far as the tutorial goes, I think it's strange to complain about its ease. If this Vince guy had complained that there is a tutorial, which is a comman complaint because folks don't like tutorials a lot of the time, then it would have made more sense to me.