Malcador

It's not arguing about realism, just how it fits in the setting. Or that versimilitude word I've seen used more time w.r.t. Fallout than any other topic (I guess I need to read more )

Well it bothered the hell out of me when I first heard of it and saw it. Doubt people are making it seeing how useless the DC area survivors are they're probably leftover military gear - which again makes no sense as the Army in Fallout has Power Armour, plasma and laser waeponry, so what do they need a nuke that seems barely able to take out a building ? It is a setting breaker for sure, I forget who pointed it out to me but it's a nice irony in Fallout that nukes are the tools that save the PA world, in the latest one - no such luck. Pretty clear what crowd they were appealing to with it, after all.

Yeah, if the weapon was impractically powerful it'd make some sort of sense. Speaking of nukes and fallout, I still find it odd how...small the radiation zone from the Megaton nuke is (mind you, that nuke seemed just enough to take out the town).

Eh, I think they can "get away" with it - not that putting a religious group in is improper, and I've a sneaking suspicion Obsidian have some smarts whenit comes to that. I'd hope people, if they were already so inclined, would rather have a problem with the over-glorification of violence - what with the slow-motion shots of 10 mm bullets decapitating people and what not.

So we're not using sales as an indication. And we're not using 'professional' review sites as an indication. Let me guess: we're using your opinion as the only safe way of judging the Fallout's? Ah, zeal, always admirable but leads you astray off the path a lot. In any case, general game reviewers are just going to review the game, at best, on its merits - practically, a lot are like the English press w.r.t. football - they give the people what they want to hear. Not all game reviewers are like that, some sites are still as credible as they are, but with a deluge of lousy and bought ones, the value of an average goes down. So you shouldn't say that Fallout 3 is superior to Fallout or Fallout 2 based on metacritic, or sales - as again, that's debatable and the market's nowhere near the same (more gunshots == more hits, amazing.) As for what a 'true' Fallout is, I've no idea how you can prove that. You could come up with a set of things that are key to the originals and then judge Fallout 3's handling of that. For example, they did the presentation of a nuked wasteland decently well, but dropped the ball on interesting storylines (micro-stories aside, heh). Hah, I was wondering when you'd show up.

I'm not sure about using Metacritic as any sort of judge, especially over the time periods. Reviews these days, as the industry's grown, get bought pretty easily by the hype machine.

So what you are saying is all those people at NMA are totally in the wrong when they point to FO: BOS and its low sales and deem it a failure. Thanks for clearing that up Drat, and Twinkie is NMA's spokesman too.

Well praise be to God, they tossed us scraps, heh.

Always tell people's true intent by how they keep telling you otherwise, heh.

Console gamers seem to loathe thinking, if we want to play that, heh. From what consoles have done to my beloved Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six, I can pretty much say games do get dumbed down. They have to appeal to a broad market after all.

Well I wager that most of the FO3 lovers aren't from the RPG bin, I know some that adore the, uh...violent parts, play it like an FPS with stats it seems, and others that think it's GTA in a nuked city. For others, well..a starving man will go for crusty bread.

Did you buy the gold edition or did the vanilla game not come with a manual? I know that my special edition came with a nice spiral bound manual. No quite as nice as Baldur's Gate 2, but certainly up there. I've been bouncing between games. I'm at the last fight in The Last Remnant, I've been playing an hour or two of Left 4 Dead with friends most nights. On top of that I'm really itching to start my Infinity Engine game marathon. I will play and finally finish them all this summer. Got the Gold Edition. Manual's on the DVD as a PDF, but, just not the same as a hardcopy one for me.

Mind the shards of glass. Issue was with it being done poorly, not with it being done. But oh well.

I thought that title was reserved for Kjarista :D Anyway, yeah, the crowd of people that sink endless hours into roaming around...explains the success or the consequence of MMORPGs I guess. Couldn't see myself wasting that much time for the life of me. That was nice about exploring in FO2, you ended up in all the places with at least some reason to do so. Given that those type of players -seem- to be the majority, I doubt they'd ever bother with improved story elements, what would the players care?

Some are pushing 200 hours of that already. Amazing, but, what can you do - quibbles about storytelling are for obsessive nerds, hah. And really it's hardly Bethesda bashing to criticize something they did in Fallout 3.

Ah phew, lucky you're tight with him, I figured you were gonna get banned. Again But, we can at least expect better writing and a story that's not FO2 : Redux, heh - and maybe one that's told, rather than appealing to the "let's LARP in a cRPG" crowd. In the end, that's about the best we'll get I think, given the way games and gamers are these days.

Hah Twink, being a Fallout fan is a lot like being an Arsenal fan, there's good promise but always be ready for disappointment.

For some reason I'm struggling to get into Civ 4. Played the utter hell out of the first three, so it's a bit weird. I blame the lack of a hardcopy manual :D

Well stirring one's imagination to invent some backstory for the skeletons to be hugging isn't really storytelling. You could easily have 2 individuals that'd waste their time to come up with background for why they were there and so forth. That's what she's arguing. The nurse's log at Germantown is telling a story and helps to, uh, enrich the background for Fallout 3, for example.

With regards to little touches, anyone else miss flavour text for items ?

Yeah, they're enhancing the game for a few thousand people.. Amazing what they get away with. The backgrounds were dead in the previous Fallout's. You HAD to rely on speech bubbles because there was nothing else. Good to be part of a crowd. Fallout 3's got a lot of symbolism, for sure.

Well my original comment was more a mockery of some fans' claims about the storytelling. In any case, seeing the skeletons hugging, or the one in the tub is nice and all but there's not much there without my expending a lot of effort to invent a lot, heh. At least they're good at not-so-deep tales.

Well for the most part, thinking skeletons in some arrangement that in all likelihood is random is storytelling is pretty flawed. Ah, it's fun to take things to extremes to battle them, heh. I suspect that a lot of people that appreciate the game in its entirety like the game for other reasons than the "storytelling". The shooty-asplosion bit does seem to draw a bit, for example. Funny too, my friend commented to me that games are lot like TV or movies these days, pretty much think he's right. heh. Back to getting in lock-step.

Hey man, it's "show not tell". Lots of stories to be told...like...that pack of noodles I found in the cupboard clearly meant this was the last stand of a man defending his homestead from invaders. And stuff. Fallout 3's storyline is spoiled if you play Fallout 2.

...but for the Fremen whose eyes have gone blue from the spice, armed only with a crysknife and riding the back of a the mighty Shai-Halud, you must find your way to....find your father and purify the water? awww, man. I always wanted to be Liet Kynes, carrying on my father's destiny. Ah Dune. God damn, I f**king hate Kevin J Anderson.