Gizmo

Ncsoft I think

Yeah, you need no help in looking like you do, that's for sure. Hey, the most successful (both critically AND sales wise) Fallout game to date ripped out GURPS and the isometric doll angle and replaced it with something else. How is that possible?! And yeah, who has ever played a Mario without running or jumping on things. Except Mario Kart. And Mario Tennis. Or the other billion Mario themed games out there that aren't platformers. Even RPG's! Go figure. So feel free to continue looking like an idiot. I encourage others to explore my pastimes as well. Its a good feeling. Except that the format would not work as expected. Fallout 2 was (mechanically) an improvement on Fallout, it had the bug & UI fixes, and added a few trick. But done FPP would have removed most of the core game and replaced it with Doom2 & Dialog. It would look like the clip in my SIG, and that would have been ~tragic.

Because, unlike you, they realized that Fallout was never about a camera angle or a combat system. It was about a setting and a story. I believe the nailed the setting but failed on the story. I'd say not http://www.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=35764 But I will agree that they nailed the setting... just not anything else

Easy... The quality of judgment has declined.

There are no exact sales figures for any of the FO games, but if you use generally accepted estimates FO3 has actually sold about three times as many copies as all the other FO titles combined. You would also need account for the difference in the size of the then current market. Selling 100 of one game to a 1000 potential buyers is 1 in 10; while selling 1000 games to 20000 buyers is only 1 in 20... The later game made more money (if both cost the same), but the first game was more popular as it was owned by twice the percentage of [available] consumers. Doom was [for a time] the most popular piece of entertainment software on Earth, but that was before computers themselves were even mainstream. Indeed I think they're more than Able...

It can be fun, its true, but then you realize what it could have been and it saps the fun away. Just think back to the Dune Sci-Fi Channel Mini series ~Then think what it could have been ~Heck Think back to the film when H.R. Giger was the set designer, and the new director decided to can him... then made a Dune adaptation that looked like it used recycled props from Flash Gordon. I see Fallout three like that, I see the 4

That Shaw Quote is tops! I don't see why Obsidian would not add a few options seen lacking in FO3 while they're in its guts ~so to speak. edited for silly mistake.

Ha!... I was wrong... (I guess my mind is too finely tuned*) *

He's used that name for years, and is WELL known among the Fallout [forum] fans ~He's a member here and at Bethsoft, and NMA (and surely others) ~I can understand some not getting it at first... but to be fair, I knew what he meant and I only read it in passing.

Indeed... What I've seen in F3 holds nothing on the originals ~and it shouldn't be that way. http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/G...junk/GHOULS.jpg Voice work in Fallout Blows F3 out of the running. *Incidentally... Having not finished F3... Is there even a single conversation in it on par with the Lieutenant or the Master? Forums... The Best RPG ever made

I would say its the intention and game philosophy (That is perceivable beyond what was actually in those games ) Fallout 3 is incessantly compared (by many) to a game that needed a Pentium 90 and 16MB system ram. But its what it did with that ram. Fallout 3 demands 32 times the memory and a minimum P4 2400MHz ~but all it does with it is present the pretty lights and the unnecessary havok sims... Imagine someone was playing the game and telling you about it over the phone "Dude~ I just Nuked a town!" "Dude I just Nuked a Church" (or an Oil Rig)... Or "This woman just hired me to step on a land mine", "This dude wants me to record a confession". Without the graphics the game is weak by comparison ~its a crutch. Its not bad to have good graphics, but they are supposed to be the icing on the cake ~not the cake. Those that made Fallout 3 should have looked to apply their tech to show off the best in Fallout, not looked to apply what they could of Fallout to show off their tech. Fallout's heads were amazing at the time; Fallout 3's heads (for their time) are not. ~They should have wanted them to look like , and changed their design to make it possible.

For the record... I am not a Bethesda hater (and though I like "Stone Prophet" more... I did not dislike Oblivion ~I also really like that little coin I can't find ) What I don't like about Fallout 3 is plainly posted across the Bethsoft forums for the last two years ~What's not posted (nuked by their automated thread pruning), is that I was one of the first to compliment the Dev team via PM as having utterly nailed the FO atmosphere (as of June 7th 2007); I compared what I had seen as par to the job the film crew did for BladeRunner, when adapting it from the book (and meant it). This was well before I found out that there was only FPP in the game (and the TPP side effect), This was before I saw Todd making the rounds showing gameplay. I dislike FO3 because ~specifically, they decided that High "Isometric" (3d) was out, rather than make it a functional part of the intended gameplay as was found in the entire series (including FOBOS); As I've said before, I cannot care any less about being put "IN" the fallout world "like I wuz reelly there"; I am far more interested in seeing the game depict the character is his own world, than view what I might see in his shoes. ~Fallout3 doesn't intend for this despite that being perhaps the most obvious thing you see at first glance in ANY other Fallout game. Secondly, FO was matter-of-fact and demanded common sense; FO3 lets you get away with anything and return in X number of hours and all is forgiven. The game is more about shooting than absolutely anything else Stark opposite from the series IMO. Third Combat: I liked the series for its combat (and for the fact that the devs had a devious knack for anticipating exactly what you'd want to say in any given situation. ) Fallout 1 & 2 & Tactics would put you in a losing position, and with careful choices, allow for you to turn the tide and survive the fight (preferably with all your NPC's bleeding, but alive) ~Fallout 3 is only about You, and Your experience ~If dogmeat dies you get mad at him for being "Stuupid", and the puppies perk makes this worse. Fallout 3 has overlooked, dismissed, and even belittled absolutely every single thing about the entire series that I enjoyed, and one gets damn tired of thread skimmers that post "you are just afraid of change" [and worse insults ~from both members and mods alike]. I laugh at the argument as I'm enamored with games of all types ~ new and old; But when the new comes with an attitude and removes all trace of the old, that's a problem... That's the very same thing as ordering crapes and being given waffles with a rude expression and them saying, "What's wrong with you? they're close enough and waffles taste better anyway ~get over yourself!" EDIT I would ask anyone here to examine these clips (pretending they know nothing of the series, and say which one Fallout 3 seems the "sequel" to)

A cinematic mod would seem to fit the Max games very well. (IMO the same does not fit so well with FO, but that's a preference I guess).

Not yet. I don't have MP2. I did try MP1 with the kung-fu mod though

Not directed @ me... but, I haven't enjoyed any non RTS game made past 2003; but I find games that I like all the time. I made the dire mistake of buying FO3 and the original Max Payne (both for the first time, at about the same time). I installed both, and played both, then FO3 sat neglected for 3 weeks ~Odd but similar thing happened when I bought Oblivion. See I bought Oblivion [CE] sight unseen, because I wanted to see what those guys could do with a native IP... and I was impressed ~it lost some luster after the tutorial, but I was still impressed and had hopes for FO3. Never once did it occur to me that they'd actually clone Oblivion for FO3 But the odd thing that I mentioned was that I found a retail (2nd hand) copy of "Stone Prophet" and played that too ~and I liked it a hell of a lot more than Oblivion, and liked the voiced dialog better too ~structurally they are not that different. Graphics are not the end all panacea for a great game, and what's true for comic books is not always true for games. (* That good art can save a crap story, but that a great story can be ruined by crap art). *In this case both games had a crap story, but Stone Prophet was more fun to play.

I need to buy that game again, and try the fixes.

At a guess, I'd say most of my Fallout 1&2 characters were melee specialists... Often times I'd not raise Small guns beyond 60% (unless I had the books for it.), My PC was never without a weapon... *Fallout 1 & 2 were designed such that your PC was picked for a mission; If he died, you start again, and your next PC is the next guy picked for the mission, given the same speech, and put outside on his way. You can plausibly play it "forever" that way. Fallout 3 cannot be played so smoothly, as it was designed around family relations and specific events that don't make sense again unless you discard all previous characters as having not happened. *Yeah... Your character could kill off town personalities in F1 and they'd be back for the next PC's game, but that's deconstructing it beyond its elegant mechanics, and is not really beneficial. (Although that would have been interesting if Fallout had kept a dynamic world and your next PC could visit a town that had been attacked by the previous guy wearing a V13 suit )

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. *Also... Not being able to finish the game means always being able to pick it up again. I've played Arx Fatalis for years and have never completed it ~I started up a new game last week, and am looking forward to seeing how far I can get this time.

Heh, I think I remember that, with the lawyer shucking and jiving behind a tree right? A slim tree not big enough to hide behind. The man was VERY lucky to be alive, much less walk away from it.

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.

Sledge hammers degrade? ~seriously? ~Ouch I hadn't thought to look or notice. That... that's just weird.

They had an internal developer's thread [loosely] called "Silly **** you'd like to see in the game".

I sort of disagree. As I see it (and if I'm correct), Fallout 1 was the original "vision". A GURPS simulator with a retro 50's past, but set in their present. The world was a changed place after all that time, and the wastelands might well have had a note on the map saying, "Here be Dragons". It seemed to me that nothing that was not left over from before the war was actually 50's themed at all... No greasers, no Elvis or bee-hive hair , no "leave it to Beaver" NPC's (like in Vault 101). It was about a man that came out of a steel womb and knew nothing of the outside world, and found in it the wrecked remains of someone else's dreams, someone else's paradise ~lost. (and he was not the first ~there were others sent before him). The wasteland was an alien place with "gawd knows what in it now", and sparse, separated patches of what was left of humanity scattered across the land. The towns were mostly normal (for Fallout), Ghouls were a fact of life, and all folks struggled to stay alive. Things like the Godzilla foot were out in the wild; possibly even hallucinated ~possibly not, or even just not what they appeared to be... It didn't matter ~it was out in the wastes and could be tongue in cheek. But you didn't find that stuff in town (back in the world)... Fallout 1 had two kinds of weird (wasteland oddities and humans gone nuts). Fallout 2 was different (and perhaps wrongly so... but I liked it well enough). Fallout 2 brought the wasteland oddities into town ~that seemed sort of wrong to me; That made them absolutely real. I would guess that there was a misinterpretation? I can't know this... but it would seem that the wasteland strangeness was accepted as universally real and after that, anything goes... and things like the chess playing scorpion appeared as "OK" (at least at the time). There may be a pattern here. Fallout had nuts in the towns and strangeness in the wastes, Fallout 2 had strangeness in town and absurdity in the wastes; Fallout 3 may have fallen into the same trap [mistaken assumptions], only it went a step further, and put absurdity in the town. Though I disagreed, you are right in that F2 was purposely zany ~I just think it was made so due to a misunderstanding ~and F3 also. *Of course I may well be totally off the mark, but that's how it has always appeared to me since I first played F2, and absolutely when I first played F3.

In real life you can pick a dead bolt with an ink pen (I've won that bet ) The idea that good tools increase skill is a good one though, its quite the case that you are limited by poor tools in almost any endeavor. *In Gothic2 the PC won't even attempt to pick a lock unless skilled in it. The game Arx Fatalis did a great job with lock picking. IMO. ~Come to think of it... Hilsfar had Lock picking in the style that TES had (where the player picked the lock ~but Hilsfar was all minigames ) ~It did it better than Oblivion though... You had to have the right picks to pick the lock And the right pick might be broken in the set you have. The lock gets complicated with more tumblers too

Doesn't this kind of defeat the point of your character having skill at lockpicking? (if you plan to do all the picking for him?) ~the whole reason for percentages in the first place is for situational impartiality ~it determines what happens with the given task at the given time. It means either the PC was able to open the lock or not, and the PC should not have an invisible helper that picks it for him. RPG characters are effectively your tool of interaction in the game world ~its been coined as "the Claw factor " , for those money munching plush toy claw machines in the shopping malls. ~It means that you are outside the box while the PC (claw) is inside the box (their world). Your interactions in the RPG world are limited by what the PC can accomplish (IE. The player never reaches into the box with their own hands, and must work with what PC that they have). Alternatively it could be said that an RPG is like building a ship in a bottle (sure its easy to just assemble the ship, but the challenge is to do it through the restriction of the bottle opening ~the window into the bottle... The PC is your window into the game world, You interact with the world through the PC... If they can't pick the lock, then you don't get to see the other side of the door). The other style is a straight adventure game (like Oblivion... where your PC doesn't even need a name, and has no "character" to consider ~its you in the bottle ~meh).