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Well, the news did give us this picture so it cant be all bad

Hold on, now. This isn't some console people are dumb thing. I mean, look at Chrono Trigger. While it was a linear game, being a JRPG, it played wildly with the idea of multiple endings and changing game-world states. The hype about Bioshock wasn't that there were two different endings, it was that it was presenting something as dark as killing a child as a choice in the game. The moral choice is something that's definitely new to consoles, and I've gotta say developers are doing an awful job of upholding the ideal with their binary, oftentimes ridiculous choices that affect incredibly little. I think that what really affects newer RPGs' nonlinearity and quality of design is the following: -Full voice acting means that all dialogue needs to be locked down incredibly early -Current design trends favor a "less is more" approach meaning hardcore elements are stripped out and/or dumbed down in favor of accessibility and the appearance that the game is 'sleeker' -Black Isle was an incredibly talented studio and... I won't name names, but a lot of modern devs just... aren't.

If you download the restoration patch, it adds 3 endings for the Hubologists. They all die in each one (in different ways for each ending. If you steal their fuel they use an alternative that blows up the shuttle when they try to take off) If they do, I hope AP ammo will actually function

I wasn't kidding when I said there should be a food item called Chef Boyarsky

Three Dog called you the lone wanderer over the radio all the time. No, in every game divisible by 3 you play as The Prisoner

FO1&2 aren't even about the drive, it's about trying to find out where the destination is. Fallout 3, yeah, it's a huge open world. But if you're following a quest you always know exactly where you're going to end up. I don't think the fact that you can ignore the main quest and do other things instead makes it a nonlinear game (in terms of story) because the quest itself is incredibly linear and the fact of the matter is you're not going to get an ending without following the proper procedure. Of course, I'd say that Fallout 1 is a lot better than this than Fallout 2 as well, but maybe I just haven't replayed FO2 enough to figure out what's optional and what isn't.

That doesn't mean they aren't optional. Most players will always do what they're told, but it takes a special game to allow them to do the opposite.

Reducing the number of key events to 5-6 instead of 70 and filling the space with sidequests counts as non-linear because...? Or that you can choose in which order to complete the objectives, or go for the Super Muties from the start? Or do you mean the ability to ignore it completely? The quests and events themselves won't change, despite what you do (except the thing with the water merchants I guess) in game. Note: I mean these questions seriously, it's 1:35 AM here, and my brain refuses to work overtime. The idea of true non-linear story design is to have NO key events. Whether you want to argue that Fallout 1 has key events or not, less of them does indeed make the game less linear. I disagree entirely. You make it sound as though non-linearity is some unattainable thing. Non-linearity is simply not putting up artificial barriers and making all reasonable player decisions possible. (For the sake of argument, "reasonable player decisions" means anything that fits within the game's ruleset.) Artificial barriers. For example: the insurmountable radiation in front of Vault 87, unkillable NPCs, and doors that can't be opened yet. These are all special cases set up by the designers that circumvent the game's ruleset to keep the player in line. Obviously, 100% freedom is impossible. It would be UNreasonable to complain that you can't use pieces of driftwood you find among the wasteland and build yourself a log cabin. But that's not the kind of thing we're talking about here.

The only freedom and nonlinearity in Fallout 3's main quest is "You can either do exactly what we tell you or not do anything at all" It's good that you can skip a huge chunk of it by going straight to (I'm really surprised they didn't lock the door TBH) but after you reach that point it's a complete roller coaster ride. Why can't I get into Vault 87 early? Why can I not avoid being kidnapped by the Enclave? Why do I have to join the Brotherhood of Steel? Face it, the game is much more concerned about showing off (melo)dramatic moments and action sequences and telling a very specific story that they gave up any pretense of player freedom. They make this game that's suppossed to be about a huge, open world where you can do anything. But as soon as it comes to story, suddenly I'm reading from a script and they get mad if I try to ad lib. Compare this to Fallout 1, where the second you step out of the Vault you can make a straight line for Necropolis and pick up the water chip, no problem. Hell, in the Necropolis you can (emphasis on CAN not WILL) be captured and taken straight to one of the (quote/unquote) "end bosses" of the game!

I disagree entirely. If you look at fallout 1, it barely even has a main quest. Instead it has 3 very open-ended objectives that can be carried out at any time, in no specific order, and with no obligation to play by the rules of the game (such as making specific characters invincible or doors locked until the plot allows them to die/open)

It's not the long development time, I have no idea how long it's been in development. So yeah, skeptical. But not impatient. It's mostly the cheesy rock music, the focus of the trailers on very superficial things, and I don't think it's nitpicky to say that the voice acting made me cringe. Maybe "fake british accent" was the incorrect way to put it, but it definitely seemed like the actress was putting on a forced, stereotypicaly "middle ages fantasy genre girl" character voice instead of acting naturally.

Yeah, you can't win. Either you haven't played it enough to pass judgement, or you played it for a billion hours even though you hate it so much in which case you're a tool. Both are just ways of saying that negative opinions don't count, which is stupid.

What you described now were like 2-3 trailers out of ...*counts*... 30? Watch all of them before saying stuff like that, like I did, ok? A lot of the older Dragon Age media contains a rich amount of gameplay information that does seem incredibly promising. But what I'm talking about is how that's all gone awa and changedy, especially in and around E3 (the e3 set 4 monhts before the game is released, as well!) It just seems that because they've changed their "company line" on the game so late in development it could be indicative of a change in design fundamentals. And considering the low quality and embarassing nature of what they're showing the press this close to release, it's cause for concern.

I guess the biggest things for the radio station are: -more points of interactivity -less sermonizing. I don't need the game telling me which action I did was jesus-like and which was satanistic. This is the news REPORT THE FACTS >(

Isn't Obs showing the same trainyard level of AP over and over again? In fact, both companies made very similar trailers. CGI trailer? Check. Level walkthrough? Check. Dialogue/origin trailer? Check. Boss battle? Check. Interviews? Check. IMO, we got the most info about the games these two companies make. Everything I've seen about AP is focused on the gameplay, how choices affect things later, how the dialogue system works. Dragon Age's trailers were awful Marilyn Manson music over top of a "Gore and Sex Reel" while some NPC screams about WAR! LOYALTY! TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELL! SOLDIER CLICHE #41b! In fact, it seemed like they were trying to HIDE gameplay-specific information to the best of their ability.

Well first off, realism isn't the end-all be-all in a post apocalytpic rpg. As long as it's explained in a way that at a quick glance you go "yeah, that makes sense", it's fine. For example, yeah Three Dog's setup didn't make much sense. But what if, in New Vegas, it's a radio station set up by some power-player moguls (something equivalent to a New Reno family in fo2), and is supported by sponsored ads? And as for maintaining the machines, come on. This is a game series where you go into abandoned, ruined vaults and find operative computers that will play chess with you. I think a big difference between any game in the Fallout series and Kotor 2 is that in Fallout your story is more focused on a single character from modest origins going from town to town and eventually affecting the entire region to the point where they are remembered for years to come. I think it's a good thing to see how the general word on the street across the entire region changes as you do things. I'd like to see the radio become a lot more reactive, though. Take stuff like being able to kill the DJs and multiply it into every aspect of their broadcast. "Well, right now we'd like to play a brief commercial from our sponsors at Fran and Dan 's Trade & Supply, but some maniac killed Fran AND Dan in cold blood so I guess there's not much point. Onto the news! Seems the Hoover Dam's been shut down beyond repair by a myserious assailant. If you're a fan of electricity, you may want to be on the lookout for an african american dame with an ichy trigger finger and a silver tongue. Could this be the same broad that shut down the cannibal operation in Desert Hills?"

This is a good idea, but I think a radio station is important to get a little bit of community feedback on some of your bigger quests. Maybe you could hoarde the tapes for yourself or donate the ones you find to the radio station. Or steal the ones the radio station has for your own personal use... I said this in one of these threads, but I would prefer it if there is a radio station that the DJ doesn't sermonize as much. It'd be cool to have a purely money-grubbing operation and you get little sing songy commercials advertising a certain slaver camp has having the "best, strongest, and cleanest. When you see the Khan brand, it stands for Quality!" etc

here it is: the new **** http://www.gametrailers.com/video/sex-dragon-age/49053 http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-09-dragon-age/50134

That's not really it. Something like that would help, but I would really just prefer if Bethesda had made their own franchise and left Fallout to, well, the Fallout people! For example Oblivion I don't care for, but it's fair enough that they made a lot of changes from Morrowind because Elder Scrolls theirs to change. Fallout just doesn't seem like it belongs to them enough for them to screw with the formula. And now it's like they've created the "new face" of Fallout and we'll never see a 'true' one in the series ever again. Sad, is all. But I do have a lot of confidence in Obsidian and JE Sawyer to push at least one of the wheels back on track in terms of dialogue, quest design, and world versimillitude. Baby steps, you know.

For me it's the other way around. I hate everything Fallout 3 stands for, but I can't tell you that I hated every single part of it. In fact, if it wasn't pretending to be a Fallout game I'd probably be much warmer to it.

If you kill Three Dog all that stuff about the good fight goes away. The intern just says stuff like "You're probably wondering why I'm not Three Dog. Well, some **** killed him! Here's some music" No more public service announcements or reactions to your deeds. Just straight to the point

I don't think lonliness is quite a big a theme in Fallout as most people seem to say (including the original developers but im right and theyre wrong how you you like them apples) I always tend to gather a posse of followers, mostly because I like the idea of the game becoming sort of a buddy movie adventure. And since, in the classic ones, time spent outside of towns is mostly a blank map screen the lonliness never really came through to me. I really appreciate the juxtaposition between the cheerfully optimistic 40s music and the desolate wasteland, though. And surely that ironic goofiness is part of what makes Fallout's retro futurism tick. I also like how the old songs, specifically the somber ones like Maybe take on new, deeper, darker meaning when applied to a post-apocalyptic setting. I wish there was some way to mod GNR into the old games!

Like I said before, I don't think that Xbox 360 players are any "dumber" than pc players or require shallower games. And super casual impulse buyers aren't checking out E3 trailers, they just pick up whatever has the coolest box art or the game they heard from the brother's uncle's roomate is pretty good. Well that backfired on them since all they've been getting for DA since E3 is criticism.

Three dog is annoying, but also lead to one of the more inspired moments in the game-- where you can kill him. Then if you tune in it's some intern lady giving very very brief segues to the music.

Or imagine this: showed off a bunch of cool gameplay elements instead of lame music videos of orcs being beheaded, showed off some cool large scale combat scenarios and pointing out how all the different classes have strengths and must work together instead of a single dragon boss battle where everyone just hacks away at it until it dies, and showed off how characters interact and grow over the course of a long narrative instead of just showing us "give a book-- sex" and begging us to believe them when they say there's SO much more to it than that.