Masterfade

If Valve is to be involved, they probably will buy Obsidian and release AP as an internal product, like what they did with Portal and Left 4 Dead. Otherwise given how non-Steam versions of their own products are published by EA, I just don't see Valve publishing AP unless AP is going Steam-only. IMHO, EA and Beth won't touch AP. Two Bioware titles are coming out almost on top of each other, there's little sense in EA publishing another directly competing product. As for Beth, WET has got pretty mediocre reviews and I don't think they want to be seen as a publisher surviving on big boys' thrown-aways. Anyway, I just don't buy the notion Sega dropping AP at this stage of development.

And Feargus said in a Gamasutra interview that Sega owns the IP. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4044...iew_.php?page=6

AP is SEGA's property. Feargus explicitly said so: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4044...iew_.php?page=6 The whole interview is worth reading. Feargus discussed a lot about pros and cons of being independent and developer-publisher relationship. And how he thought Obsidian as a contractor working for publishers.

Well, I gave three reasons why I think the repair system is one of the highlights of Fallout 3's gameplay design. Care to tell me why you hate it so much?

A lot of your suggestions actually make the game easier to produce technical wise (not seamless world, no mini-game, using repair kits instead of maintaining a database of what repairs what, etc), so Beth probably had made a conscious decision to do it the hard way. And for most part I'm glad they did. A seamless world makes exploration more immersive, fun and rewarding, landmines stomping on a overmap doesn't, at least not for me. Fallout 3 had two of the best designed mini-games in any CRPGs, replacing them with stats-based check will make the game less involving and less fun. I consider Fallout 3's repair system to be great, why? Because it add a whole layer of strategy into the game. When you're choosing a weapon, before you just think how powerful and versatile the weapon is and how rare the ammo are, now you also need to consider how hard is it to find another weapon of the same type to repair it. This design also has some additional benefits a) Make combat/exploring more rewarding for players while maintaining a carry weight limit. Most weapon and armor loots are in a low condition, so players can combine them via repair skill instead of reaching the carry limit quickly then leaves a trail of loots behind. b) Partially solved the loot placement problem in an open-world game without completely resort to leveled lists. In Oblivion, just about everything from chests to quest rewards are leveled, which removed a lot of 'wow' factors from exploring and questing. Where as in Fallout 3, you can occasionally get very powerful rewards from exploring/questing without completely unbalancing the game. Because you can only use it for a number of times before it breaks down and you're unable to find similar weapons to repair it. During my gameplay, I got the unique plasma rifle when I was level 7 or 8, from a quest where combat can be completely avoided with a high stealth/speech skill. It's one of the best weapons in game but I didn't go out and turn everything into green goo because I know I have no other plasma rifles to repair it, so I reserve it for the toughest situation. As for gunplay, the whole accuracy vs damage argument had been debated to death. Mathematically they're equal, skill-based accuracy is more realistic and for most people I dare say, skill-based damage is more fun. It's really a matter of preference and I prefer skill-based damage. I do agree health recovery mechanism need some work, especially food. Food just gives too little health boost in Fallout 3, and it's not scalable with skills therefore pretty much useless. My idea is making foods give a 'fed' buff and resting without 'fed' only restores, say, two-third of health and you won't gain 'well-rested' buff when sleep hungry. I think a well-designed health system should give penalties for cripples without making players reload everytime they're crippled. If cripples are too hard to cure (requiring NPC doctor/ certain player perk), then people will just reload. You've got a lot of very good ideas in your post, but I think most of them just make the game different rather than make it better.

NVM. Guess I've read too much Something Aweful's takes on the PC modding scene. My post's now editted out and sorry if it offended anyone.

NVM

Downloaded and played the demo and honestly I'm not impressed. Waiting for more reviews now before making a decision.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25503 If the story is accurate, they must be pretty desperate to go public. Honestly I doubt the wisdom of a single pipeline studio with very long product cycle to trade itself on stock market.

Cyberia 2: Resurrection It was a pre-rendered 3D adventure game with a lot of rail-shooting and puzzles. Awesome graphics for its time. I had just begun high school when I played it and thought 'wow the Major chick is totally hot'. I tried to get the original Cyberia but gave up after hearing the Major (forgot her name) was not in it.

Don't know why but every time I see achievements in video games I think of a news report I once heard on the radio about towns offering monetary rewards for people to drive their kids to school and visit doctors, etc.

Yeah they just published it, but the developer later joined Bethesda. I think he's the arts director of Fallout 3. Delta V is probably the most unknown in-house Beth game. It's a cyberpunk vehicle shooter, I remember finding it on my dad's work computer and played a few times when I was in his office. Yeah Fallout 3 is pretty hard at the beginning, I constant ran out of ammo and found myself meleeing with my scientist type character. It probably had something to do with me going to the fire ant town right after Megaton though.

I consider Bethesda's FPS games somewhat related to their later RPG stuff, because of the open-area/open-world design. I never got to play their original Terminator game in 1990(a few years too young for that), but it was a sand-box game setting the player free on the L.A. streets trying to either protect or kill Sarah Connor.

SkyNET was like a standalone expansion to Future Shock, with some multiplayer stuff thrown in. Their marketing guy must be either brave or crazy or both to release a game based on Terminator IP without printing the word "Terminator" on the box. Guess it wasn't Pete Hines.

Which is a Mac title. I didn't know copying mac solutions counted as pioneering outside Redmond. Well, if you think difference in platform isn't important, then I'll just it's the first 3D fps with free mouse-look, as Marathon is 2.5D. Besides the 3D and the mouse-look, Future Shock also features large outdoor open-area. Oh and drivable vehicles too. From a technical point, Bethesda's earlier FPS titles (e.g. 2029) lagged about a generation behind id, then they overtook id with XnGine. Of course a year later id came back to blow everyone out of the water with the Quake engine. But for a while XnGine was among the most advanced FPS engines on the market. In term of game design, Bethesda's FPS had this constant vision of openness which was ahead of its time comparing to corridor shooters that dominated the era. Yeah, they're not THE pioneer of FPS as id was, but I stand by my earlier assertion that they're definitely one of the pioneers.

Which is a Mac title.

If the first PC game utilizing free mouse-look isn't pioneering, I honestly don't know what game is.

Why not? IMO, any studio with Future Shock under its belt should automatically qualify as a FPS pioneer.

The shooter aspect of Fallout 3 was very disappointing given Bethsoft's status as one of the pioneers of the FPS genre.

So because one mod (FOSE) disables GfWL (since GfWL is made to detect cheats.. not much point having achievements otherwise) temporarily, you deem GfWL to be a nuisance and a buggy piece of crap..? I never said anything about GfWL being 'a buggy piece of crap'. Also FOSE is not a mod but a program hooked up to the Fallout 3 process to provide extra scripting functions. Thanks for reminding me not everyone launch their game with FOSE. As a long-time user of MWSE & OBSE, I guess I do tend to overestimate how many people actually use that tool.

Don't know if related to "old-schoolness", but one analyst already lowered his estimated DA:O sales figure http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ea-h...neration-creutz

From what I've read at Codex (plenty of Polish speakers there it seems), the 1st and 2nd con are also one, i.e. 'old school graphics'. Don't know what that's supposed to mean. Maybe the graphics isn't shiny, glowy, bloomy enough to be 'new school'?

Dunno, but maybe it has something to do with (according to some reports) the same reviewer has given a 10/10 to Oblivion?

Well, the chances are if you're using Fallout 3 mods you're using FOSE (lots of more advanced mods require it) and FOSE loader automatically disables GfWL.

Don't know if he has anything to do with those blog reports, but I'm quite sure Google.com is a forum regular. I see him every time I log on.