Tagaziel

Just replayed Fo3 to refresh my memory. I hope FNV includes a main quest that actually makes sense, rather than Fo3's drivel, where the only justification for attacking the purifier is "it doesn't feel right".

There is a bit of "using the Force" to it; lot of the guidelines are reinforced through lead critique and peer review. Even with an established "quest doc", the examples can never catch every angle of what a designer might want to do in practice. Obsidian's area design docs (or faction docs, or character docs, when quests aren't area specific) are required to cover quests, quest states, and repercussions for those states. If they start to get a little too fractious, I will ask the designer to consider revising how the quest develops, explaining the potential problems with their current plan. If something's outright nuts, I just tell them it's nuts, why it's nuts, and that it has to go away. Fallout Capital Wasteland could've used someone like you.

For Matra's sake, Obsidian pulled off KOTOR2 and succeeded (for the most part). There's no reason to doubt that they will prevail this time.

Since this is the Setting and Canon section... I hope for New Vegas to incorporate or at least confirm the plotline and/or canon elements of Van Buren. It'd be a shame to see that much work go to waste just because someone thought a shooter is more worthy of being a sequel. That said, I'd love to see the game expanding on what was provided in Fo1/Fo2, preferably integrating some of the more obscure lore or even previously unknown one straight from the Fo1/Fo2 design docs. Also, the Jackals and the Vipers need to make a formal debut, the Union of Atomic Workers (or their remnants too). On the more obvious side, Scorpitron. No post-nuclear Vegas is complete without a Scorpitron.

True, but FO3's story is what it is to introduce new players to the Fallout universe. The Commonwealth is probably going to be central to an eventual FO4, considering how Bethesda always places references to future sequels in their games. If that's what it is, then it is stupid. Who in their right mind makes a full out game to introduce players to the universe? There exist other ways to acquaint people with elements of the previous games while retaining logic and plausibility in the plot.

Fo3's story was an incoherent mash of plot devices from all previous Fallout games, FO:BOS in particular (FEV Vault, anyone?). A real shame, because Beth showed they have original ideas, like the Commonwealth - MIT, sealed off center of research amidst the horror that is the Commonwealth. Manufactures lifelike androids. Invasion of the Body Snatchers plot, anyone? Would be far more interesting than retreading Fo2. Or include robots, like Wasteland and FOT did. It'd be far more fun to stop a new, robotic menace, not to mention, the Behemoth from FOT is actually scary, unlike the oversized gorilla in Fo3.

Large, populated cities aren't breaking the wasteland feel, long as they are done correctly. Take the Hub from Fo1 for instance, a trading hub surrounded by a wall, estabilished around an Oasis. A massive city, yet it doesn't destroy the feeling of post-apocalypse in the game.

At that rate, humanity would be extinct by 2241. But in 2241, NCR's territories had 700,000 citizens. In the 23rd century, over a century after the war, the population growth would be positive and several major settlements would likely emerge, with more on the way. Despite mutants, bandits and whatnot.

It's been two centuries since the war. People, y'know, procreate. And stuff.

Morrowind's writing wasn't bad. On the contrary, it was average to good.

But it didn't fit in with Fallout. Here, let me quote the nuke guards from Fo1: So yeah, chucking mini-nukes left and right and nuking towns is not Fallouty.

As long as they don't release the game together with say Assassin's Creed 2, it should be fine. BG&E was released at about the same time as Sands of Time - madness. The fact alone that Ubisoft allowed this sequel to be made was already a huge surprise for me. Ancel must've done some serious lobbying. Apparently he sold his soul and the evil Ubisoft overlords made him develop 66 Rayman Raving Rabbids games before he could make this. Small price to pay.

The voice clip is definitely Jade from BG&E1. I think it's authentic. Therefore:

Hysteria = Free Marketing Win win, basically.

Hamburgers outsell high cuisine everyday, but that doesn't make them automatically better/healthier, so the argument success=quality can be dropped already.

It's kind of an obvious fact, that Fallout was never intended to be mainstream. It was a recreation of the PNP gameplay and feel, aimed at a niche, in a time when going full 3D and realtime was the bandwagon most RPGs happily jumped on.

I don't see why Obsidian should blindly copy/paste Bethesda's design. With all its flaws, Fo3 is still extremely mutable, just look at the Fo3 Compendium, various gameplay mods like Explosive Entry or Enclave Commander, weapon mods etc. I am confident that they will create something akin to KOTOR2's upgrade system - take a basic feature, dial it to the max, put it on crack, dump in FEV and create an extremely playable monstrosity. <3

Uh. that's because Morrowind wasn't dumbed down? Oblivion is a dumbed down version of Morrowind, less skills, less possibilites, much less attention to lore or story, less weapons, less spells, Xbrick as the primary development platform.

Indeed.

Yes. There's absolutely no way to create game that would make oldskool fans happy. Fans who bothered to waste 12+ years on various boards discussing what kind of game would be faithful to original Fallout. Van Buren would've managed that easily.

I will start bashing people with various shovels eventually, if the "hardcore fans cannot be pleased" argument keeps surfacing. All we want is a game faithful to the originals. Is it that hard to understand?

Arcanum, while a buggy, low-res mess, was amazing. The world was living, breathing and responding to your actions and the characters... after Virigil bailed on me, I spent four real life hours looking for him under every rock in Arcanum. Few games enthrall me so much.

That never bothered me... If it happened... then he missed, nobody is perfect, and flukes do occur; If my PC fired all shots but one and they all missed, then the last shot jammed... Its memorable as amazingly bad luck... but I'm not going to curse the game as being broken just because I wanted the shots to hit. ~That's the point of the dice, it reflects an impartial reality, unaffected by personal wants, and feelings about what is "right", and what "should have happened". There's a video on youtube of that guy shooting his lawyer 6 or seven times at near point blank (he did hit the guy, but he mostly missed, and the lawyer walked away from the incident to get medical assistance). I've seen posts from players in shocked disbelief that they missed at point blank ~but it happens. And what if you have no bullets left and no other weapon profiency? That's right --> STUCK! Being stuck is soooooo fun! Then that PC is a casualty... Have you never seen a film where the hero is vilely wronged by the villain, family slaughtered, and him burning with hatred, and spends the whole film in revenge, and at the last moment when he has the villain right where he wants him... he gets hit by a train or something and the villain gets away with it all. *Come to think of it... "The Crow" started out a bit like that ~minus the return from the dead... I find it far more satisfying knowing that I completed the game against very real odds of losing, and not just coasting through it with the illusory risk of failure. Dude, I don't know how you like to play your games, but I know when I've no meaning to advance, then I get pissed and quit. No weapon, dead PC. Have fun! He's called "The Dog". Look him up when you visit Ashbury.

On a side note Rivet City is said to be the remnants of the Navy Research Institute that claimed the aircraft carrier in recent years. Which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, given that its 2277. To be honest, the West Coast wasn't a honeymoon - gangs, craploads of mutants and then some, radiation, dust storms... and yet in 80 years it managed to progress to a point surpassing anything the Capital Wasteland came up in the past 200 years. Hostiles in the area or not, there is no excuse for the lack for development, since humans will develop no matter the circumstances. Otherwise, we'd still be sitting in caves picking on scabs and fungus, hiding from the hostiles. Sounds like Little Lamplight actually.

I disagree, Fo2 wasn't comedy. It was inconsistent in tone, yes, but it wasn't deliberately zany, just came off like that due to various discordant elements.