Gizmo

Not really, walking through towns and through the wastes looked the same, but the world map and town maps had different scales. If anything, it was more like FO1 and 2 than like FO3, since you transitioned through exit grids from the more detailed town map to world map that showed the various locations as single squares, and had random encounters on the way. Indeed... Wasteland and Fallout were tremendously alike in some ways. http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/G...nk/example1.jpg http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/G...nk/example2.jpg (Which of course, had to be deliberate.)

well...it's not necessarily that FO1 & 2 were "totally realistic, yay!" but more that FO3 is kinda arbitrarily unrealistic. like..., ok a thin chance that after rummaging around on shelves you'll get a rotten meat platter that barely heals you or 5 billion stimpacks, boxes of food everywhere, and well...you get it. now the computers, i agree it's silly...but as i said, i really liked that element and thought that was a good example of well-implemented suspension of disbelief because they actually enhanced the story. In Fallout... was there a single above ground computer that worked? (maybe; Lets just say there was..) In F2 there were two that I know of, one in Gecko, the other in San Francisco. ~That's three in the first two games combined. *Now I could be wrong of course... so lets triple it and add 1 for good measure. Now compare that to the number of working terminals found above ground in the nations capital 200 years after the war....

What about [how about] series concepts from all three that were cut? [The EPA, the original idea with Junktown (used on a different town), and whatever else they wanted but could not include at the time]... *I once asked Emil Pagliarulo about audio touch ups... and if they did any that brought Ron Perlman back into the studio... to ask him to say that one line in the end that reflected the original ending for Junktown, and put the wav file in the goodies folder for Fallout 3 ~with that, a modder could reconstruct the original ending as intended

To me...Traits seem awfully close to TES Birthsigns, and Perks seem awfully close to permanent spell effects, so if they change the basic character gen. screens, there should be little problem one would think.

Fallout was abstract on the micro details of the landscape, and Fallout 3 is depicted up close and personal with them... (and a lot of it doesn't make sense) ~Namely, (off the top)... The folks in Megaton have had micro-fusion power for decades [centuries?] and they live in tin shacks surrounded by a sheetmetal wall. Their computers work, but they use them for stuff they could write in a [paper] notebook. Fallout 3's towns exist in a static time capsule that hasn't changed in 200 years (where the rest of the series depicted the world slowly recovering from the war). These kind of oversights don't go well with a game that has the kind of detail they have put into the rest of it. Some of us want to follow the story from start to finish, others want to run around lobbing shots with the Fatman and don't care about anything unless it won't blow up.... The rest are somewhere in between ~and probably snicker or scoff every time their PC drinks from the toilet.

An overland map that behaves a bit like Google Earth, where you set your destination on the Pipboy, and the camera backs away from the PC in a rising arc towards the new location. The player sees a red line tracing the 3d topography of the land (and a traveling PC at first ~and in the end), while a day counter rapidly ticks off the hours of the trip. (This would pause and shoot straight down to the current location if a random encounter occurred, and the PC will have a fight/sight/or passive encounter). *This would be as smooth a transition from FPP to TPP to FPP as I can come up with.

But Fallout 1 & 2 covered about an tenth of the continental US [not including Alaska], Fallout 3 covers a small part of Maryland. * I do get what you are saying, but IMO that's kind of a design flaw... Making a game that covers a wide area at less detail is still providing a bigger picture than a game that covers a fractional area in extreme detail. Its like comparing an aerial photo of a mountain range to a close up photo of a rock garden.

I'd appreciate a few PS:Torment style conversations and their stat checks, changes, and XP's.

I remember those from two years ago They're not the best spoon 'cuz their tines are too long, and they're not the best fork 'cuz their tines are too short.

*Not processed* ~ its there, its just a lot longer than I'd expected for such a short clip. Really it was just supposed to be a quick [albeit extreme] example of menu alterations (I uploaded it just before... Its from a mod I'm creating.) ** Its up.

The Interface would be an easy change. They can use the entire screen for whatever they want, and change it to suit. *Wait.... I've got something somewhere...brb * Give it a minute... ** Quite a few actually... (Youtube is slow) ***Sorry about the over-hype (it won't live up to it )

I do hope they at least make enough changes to make it their own. Personally given the choice, I'd like it better if it were a bit more like Kotor2 than Fallout 3 as shipped, and I don't see the engine as being any restriction in that ~though it would require many changes to the base assets. (building tops and expanded heights for some of the interiors).

I don't know much of his other music, but I agree with you there 100% [His work on BG2 was great] *I worried it would be ill fitting for F3, but it was not as bad as I'd expected to be... http://img113.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fallout1jf2.swf

~Please. Just have a look at his site, and listen to even the menu music . http://www.markmorganmusic.com

That's why I think it's unlikely he'll return for video games. Probably Jeremy Soule will do the job. Oddly enough, Mark had to quit work on Giants and Jeremy Soule finished the project

Indeed... as I mentioned in the post, it should be an option. Didn't Diablo do it? It surely did not hinder its success. (and with Diablo it wasn't optional) Seconded! I too would like to know if Mark Morgan would be considered for a new set of tracks! His stuff positively seethes with the Fallout ambiance. http://www.markmorganmusic.com

Strange thought... [no really...] Could Fallout Vegas be to Fallout 3 as Halo-wars is to Halo? (or is it not possible with the engine?) ~ Obviously with a bit more of an RPG slant to it. But you won't.... Who would quit Fallout 3 to reload on a whim?*But also.... there have been games that were made to deliberately wait half an hour before reloading, though that was not my suggestion here. ** Its not to make it impossible to reload like that... just inconvenient enough to discourage it as a regular habit.

Hey

A lot of games are like that (its easier to make that way I'd imagine). *The solution IMO might be to make a save anywhere game that autosaves at certain predetermined points, and that allows one to save & quit when they like (but does not allow them to save at will) ~some won't like that option though. [edit: Didn't Diablo do this?] **For them, how about make the Save behavior possible to set in the initial game options? ~marked in the game or to the character. IWD2 had "Heart of Fury" mode set from a config editor that tagged the game as an HOF game.

I've a lot of games, but until last year Max Payne wasn't one of them. Fallout 3 is in a class by itself (and I can't point to a contemporary peer ~having not played Mass Effect), but in my case Fallout 3 is like the talented child star from famous parents; There's an unfair expectation that they'll measure up or surpass them. IMO Its like the child chose to sing instead of act, and can never surpass the parents. /

In my case the abstraction is why I play; I've no use for a fantasy simulator. Not by [technological] necessity... It was for complete impartiality. You don't need a fast computer to tell the events, you need one to show them in bump-mapped 32bit color with dynamic lighting. Folks never had to play PnP... They wanted to. Its not just about the visuals. Even in 2009 the state of CRPG's is still that a top notch video game's scope doesn't hold a candle to a medium notch PNP campaign. Personally I like the best graphics possible ~until it hampers the actual game~ I don't play games for the graphics and they are the first thing to get cut ~and are not missed. Funny thing happened about three years ago... I found two games for sale that I'd never heard of. One was Oblivion, the other was "Stone Prophet"; I bought them both, played them both, and IMO there is not a whole lot of difference except that Prophet is more challenging and it's voice work is better (IMO) ~and the graphics are not as much of a resource hog (and each and every face in the game outclasses those found in Oblivion). I still play Stone Prophet. *Also I made the mistake of buying Fallout 3 and Max Payne (1) at the same time, having never played either. I tried them both for an hour each ~and then Fallout 3 sat on the shelf for a month. That was never a problem ~playing in character (and something to anticipate choosing when playing the next). They're related, but different, and both still currently made [and played] too. The problem I have with "Save anywhere" games (Like Planescape even) is that it encourages 'baby stepping' your path through the game ~and skill checks become meaningless. There is a real need to be able to quit when you must (and return without loosing an hours progress), but without restrictions... you get too many easy outs [like saving in Fallout before trying to plant a bomb on an NPC... and reloading until you succeed ~actions like that should pose a real risk to your character, and be something that they are just good enough to get away with, or incredibly lucky enough to pull off, but it should always come with immutable consequences for failure (and so, be self limiting by design). It'd be nice if a game auto saved at milestones, but let you quit at need and return [later] exactly where you left off. ~Or there's the hard core way ... (like the method used in A.D.O.M. ~that game even crc checks the sav to discourage tampering, and if you die in the game it erases your game).

I certainly won't disagree, but they do have some really silly bits left in it instead of fixed. I was genuinely shocked at my F3 character bending down and immersing their hand in the toilet bowl and lifting up water to drink (while still inside the vault!)

I can recall buying Oblivion to see what Bethesda could do with a native IP (I'd not really heard much of them before that). Myself, I was impressed, and envisioned a "DoW/NWN looking" Fallout 3, with the kind of detail I saw in Oblivion. Something like these (though I'm not suggesting it be like these ~I mean they were quick examples) ~And these were just fun

One of the very first computer games I played was an old Star Trek C64 title. My friend loaded it up and let me control the ship. I did not read the manual, and the first button I pushed was my last. (totally random, the button I pushed was the ships self destruct ~it exploded and he said "what did you just do?"). I did not think the game was stupid, I knew that I just didn't know how to play.

Woops...Accidental mistake when I erased one quote from my post.