bhlaab

Well, stalker is very mouse-friendly with its inventories. And any sort of auto aim/snap to target would miss the point of stalker's combat entirely. Plus I don't think there are enough buttons on the controller to map everything to.

I really don't think STALKER could ever work on a console without MASSIVE compromises. Sorry Which is really a shame. For you. I think it's great

I really don't think STALKER could ever work on a console without MASSIVE compromises. Sorry

Okay, me too. But just mentioning that makes me feel like my social life is slipping away so I try not to focus on it. I can see why they did it. They want you to be able to see the Interesting Thing that's happening to the door, and without the isometric perspective it has to open from the inside. Oh God don't even get me started on that. Before I played it I was like "It's ron perlman doing his thing, it can't NOT be great!" And then the first line had to be ****ing "SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME...!" of ALL THINGS it had to be since the dawn of time. War, War never changes. Since the dawn of time In a world Where one man Can stand up And fight for justice...

I'd say the only NPC that gets even remotely close to the people in vault 101 is the girl from the Declaration of Independence quest, but of course as soon as the quest ends she refuses to join you and pisses off to the ghoul underworld to sit around and offer fetch quests

They've already said that they're giving up on faction wars and there will be 70 uniquely placed and designed quests (ie not procedurally generated)

It wasn't seeing the wasteland for the first time that impressed me, it was the whole Vault sequence. I actually felt an attachment to Amata and the other characters because you actually got to see them grow and establish themselves over time. It was interesting to play through what it's like to be locked away in the vault. By the end I wanted to leave, but I was sad about leaving everyone behind. Returning later was also fun to see how I completely destroyed everybody's lives by leaving. Two problems: -a long series of linear, scripted sequences does NOT hold up on subsequent playthroughs especially since it's a tutorial sequence stretched out to 20 min in length -the rest of the game doesn't hold up, narrative-wise, either. As for fps vs iso, I thought the little text description "For the first time in your life, you see natural sunlight" from Fallout 1 had a lot more impact than 3's extreme bloom effect

I just thought of another thing I hated about Fallout 3: Tiered skill checks. Lockpicks were either Very Easy, Easy, Medium, Hard, or Very Hard. In Fallout this means 0, 25, 50, 75, 100 So it is completely pointless to have a lockpick skill of, say, 80. (It makes the minigame easier, but the minigame is incredibly easy to begin with!) So Lockpicking is a hard limit, yet they make Speech checks a dieroll. That's like wearing shoes on your hands and gloves on your feet >=^(

I think the HP/RAD system they have would be fairly novel and fun if you didn't have 200 weightless stimpacks and radaways on hand as little as an hour into the game. Also, the fact that there are only 2 or 3 places in the game with an adequate amount of environmental radiation to kill you, and Rad-X magically does not work at those times. As for everything else you said, I agree with the fact that food is far too common (And useless as a health restoration item, it's really only there to decorate the environment). However all that other stuff seems like a bit... much. The most I'd be comfortable with is a hunger system such as in STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl but even that I wouldn't deem as necessary. They are making an RPG, after all, not a post-apocalyptic survival simulation. Hunting creatures for a general store would be a cool side mission, though. With a hunger system you'd have to decide what to keep and what to sell, not to mention how you can afford to carry it.

People keep saying this, but maybe it's just me I CAN'T play an RPG unless I'm interested in the story, or even if I hate the story I need to know that there's something I'm "meant" to be doing. In Fallout 3 I beat the main quest, hated the ending, and then decided to reload an old save and continue exploring where I left off and just couldn't do it. I need that knowledge in the back of my head that all the exp and loot I'm getting is building to something, and if that something is more exp and better loot then I'm bored. Same reason I can't play Diablo or MMOs, I guess. Even Fallout 2, which I love, I can replay it as many times as I want but I can't keep playing after the end. Yeah, there are some quests I missed along the way but damn it the Enclave is destroyed my journey is DONE. Going back for anything just seems empty and hollow.

I do think it would be nice if crpgs could move beyond the standard chase-the-macguffin plot though. Also move beyond the need for ther player character to be savior of the world. Slightly more humble and less grandiose motivations migth actually be more interesting. Yeah, I definitely agree. But Fallout seems to be like Indiana Jones in that part of the charm comes from reveling in that serialized cheesiness.

Here's the secret formula for a Fallout plot: Need to find macguffin = Must become fish out of water --> While searching for macguffin, uncover dastardly plot that is the "real" story of the game = Fish out of water becomes inadvertant savior to everyone through fate and circumstance There you go, you've got a background to provide a springboard for the plot, but vague enough to be mutable to the player's experience. Fallout 3 was on the right track, they just bungled the motivations, didn't really consider anything beyond the broad strokes, and did a terrible job at tidying up the loose ends.

I tried to play it by taking it on its own value, it's still rubbish. Their attempts at a streamlined, more user-friendly interface ended up to be intrusive, convoluted, and I'm still not sure how it works. It's a giant circle that is planted around the center of the screen and has a slot-based inventory, except there are two "layers" of slots except you can only see the first layer unless you stop and open the full inventory, and all sorts of crazy garbage like that. Universal Ammo is terrible. The idea is that it's like mana, and the game is balanced by the fact that firing a pistol uses 2 ammos and using a rocket launcher takes 10 ammos. The problem is that when you run out of ammos you're screwed! The point of carrying multiple weapons in any FPS or RPG is that if you run out of ammo for one or can't use it for whatever reason you have another one. It's like they thought this through for about 2 seconds before implementing it. The awful engine is stuttery even on current-gen cards, is prone to crashes, has some of the ugliest lighting I've ever seen, and can only handle small areas of about 3 or 4 small-to-medium-ish sized rooms in between agonizingly long load times. And since it's Deus Ex you have to backtrask through areas quite a bit meaning a simple fetch quest amounts to "walk through two rooms-- 15 second load time -- walk through three rooms -- 15 second load time -- etc etc etc" just to get from one end of a city to the other. The gameplay is all about picking a faction and doing missions against the other factions, except there's no sort of reputation system in place to keep you from taking missions from the people you were just slaughtering ten minutes ago. So yeah, I guess my reason is that "it wasn't like the original" in that the original was functional, well made, and entertaining.

Shipped =>[direct correlation to]=> Sold It's pointless trying to rewrite history, the fact of the matter is that Fallout 3 was probably THE most successful title of 2008* So yeah, we can expect New Vegas to be a little bit similar to it. The main issue is that if none of the flaws in Fallout 3 are addressed in its followups then they're turning their golden child IP into diminishing goods. And if there's any big title that's on the precipice of a major public opinion backlash, it's Fallout 3. Especially after the hugely bungled DLC. EDIT *Okay I forgot WoW lich king, but let's consider that part of its own little bubble society

Well, obviously we're all concerned that New Vegas will repeat all of the horrible, horrible mistakes from Fallout 3. It really feels like the franchise's "last chance", to me anyway. And every so often I see that the lead designer is looking at this thread and possibly taking very detailed notes of everything we're complaining ab-- okay probably not, but it's nice to pretend we're being at least a little bit proactive with our ****ing instead of yelling into the ether or whatever. And yeah, of course Interplay is to blame for a lot of this, but at this point it'd feel like shouting insults at a drowning man (ie NOT COOL )

Fallout NEEDS the blank PC, it's all about cutting a path and a character for yourself. When you've created your own special little murderous nazi slavedriver it's a bit unfair for the game to suddenly decide put its own words and backstory into his mouth. "Oh, he saw his father die when he was young. That's why he shoots children in the ****..."

Casino chips sounds very likely. Although not as durable as caps, they can't be reproduced and should be plentiful enough in the Vegas area. I'm expecting bottlecaps though. Vegas is probably close enough to be affected by the NCR so probably just "money" like in Fallout 2. I'd be very surprised if the NCR didn't show up in this game, maybe even as the villains.

That reminds of something weird from Fallout 3. I'm usually not one to get all bent out of shape over pedantic lore details, but this just stuck out to me as strange. You find prewar money all over the place, and it's worth 2 or 3 bottlecaps. So why are they still using bottlecaps if there's tons of prewar money and its more valuable than caps? Which in turn reminds me of another futile demand I have for New Vegas: Trading with any npc. Maybe give it more character than even Fallout 1/2 by making certain NPCs accept certain items (for example, a pacifist won't want guns in return for their medical equipment and a crooked athlete might place a premium on any Buffout you give him) VATS works pretty well in long range, imo. But it's awful in close range, and since the AI's main routine seems to be "CHAAARGE!" it's problematic-- especially near the end of the game where you're in cramped buildings with about 15 super mutants surrounding you on every side. Run and Gun doesn't work particularly well at either long or close range unless you're using a scoped weapon.

Isn't this the one where the trailer says WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A DRAGON HUNTER.... BECOMES A DRAGON because that isn't marketing that makes people want to play it. someone should tell them that.

There are a lot of problems with VATS that need to be fixed besides what you've said. -You are nearly impervious to damage while in slow mo -Unless you're already incredibly far away from the enemy it has very little tactical use beyond replacing the awful run and gun gameplay -The fact that VATS uses a queue of shots means that as soon as you unleash the enemy starts moving around and that 95% chance you had on the head may go down to 0% instantly as he ducks behind a wall. This enemy movement also means that grenades never hit their target correctly. -Melee is incredibly awkward in VATS. You can't target specific limbs, the animations bug out, whether your attack connects is based far more on (the buggy) animations than stats, and the game has no qualms with re-rooting you to another spot altogether-- one that might be completely removed from any chance of hitting the target. It's happened to me, at least. -Slow motion gets annoying. Not a bug or a design flaw, but it's ANNOYING.

Haha, I don't think they'd fly off of the body comedy-style. I think it would actually be more of an explosive burst, with all the nerve endings mangled and in bizzarre knots and staining your jeans.

Hey, I'm just trying to soften the blow of the inevitable. For example, It won't.

Not necessarily. I mean, they've already got Fast Travel. All you need to do is keep it optional and give it more depth with random encounters. Okay, if I had to place a bet I'd say there won't be but it'd be nice. I think Fallout 3 needed a whole lot more focus on towns and hubs. The ones that were there just weren't incredibly substantial, with lame quests like "walk around and patch up all the pipes!" or "I'll pay you 90 caps for each whatsit you bring me" making up the bulk of your time spent there. Wandering the wastes and stumbling upon random dungeon buildings should be secondary to substantial, story-filled quests.

Make every weapon really wacky like a butt gun that shoots butts and you can only target peoples butts

The reflective pool in Fallout 3's DC was like 10 feet long