Slowtrain

The best lockpicking minigame I've played was in Dungeon Lords, although not many people played that game so I'm not surprised if noone's seen it. I actually bought Dungeon Lords, but when I realized that it was quite literally an unfinished game, I never bothered to play it. DW Bradley was a good game designer at one time. I don't know what the hell happened.

A year down the road and no one will even remember or care that it was ever anything but Syfy. Just like no one thinks Wii = Urine anymore. Wii=wholesome fun games the entire family, even gramma can enjoy.

This is why they are doing it. Unusual spellings can be trademarked. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/business...adcol.html?_r=2

Normally, I would agree with this. However, upon stumbling upon Vault 112 by accident and completing the quest inside: 1) I was getting dialogue options with my father that were referencing information that I had never learned and things I had never done. This made me nervoous that the game was not REALLY desgigned for this to happen. AT the very least, Bethesda obviously couldn't be arsed to put in some simple checks to see if my character had ever even done those things and then at least EXPLAINED them to me so I woudl know what the heck I was supposed to have done. In other words: Yes, its great that you kind find your father by accident; it's bad that Bethesda appeared to not care enough to actually account for the differences in doing it that way vs following the main story line. 2) The first time through the game I don't want to miss the "story events" no matter how crummy they are. Especially since, as I have come to understand, the main story is "blink-and-you'll-miss-it" short.

Since Fargo acquired the rights to it, one can only assume he intends to make it. Hopefully, he won't try to aim it at the mainstream Halo gamer market

Its a better lockpicking minigame than Oblviion. ANd at least it has minimum skill requirements for locks. ALso better than Oblivion. the best lockpicking minigame of recent years was in Thief Deadly Shadows. Mostly bexause it took time to work the circles around and since the game didn't pause when you were lockpicking, you were acutely aware of each passing second that you spent working the lock bringing a guard closer. The Deus Ex system worked as well although that was strictly skill and resource based. ANy lockpicking minigame that pauses the in game action to give you infinite time to work a lock is ultimately doomed to failure.

Yeah. I thought he was just there for a few months based on my few brief looks art the Interplay forum recently.

I tend to agree. Much the same way I like the idea of a learn-by-doing skill system, but my actual experiences with them has been not so great. Open worlds tend to be difficult due to traveling needs and narrative needs. I think both an open world and a learn-by-doing skill system COULD be done. But it would take a dedicated developer to get it to really work. And I will say that Daggerfall came darn close to pulling off the open world thing successfully. I haven't found Bethesda's laters attempts to be all that successful though until FO3. And FO3's scale is really too small to be really an open world.

This does not bode well for the FO MMO. He left interplay (and the V13 project) to go there... Jeez. How long was he with Interplay? COuldn't have been very long. Not a good sign at all for the mmorpg.

I just think driveable vehicles are required in order to implement a nice big map. Much like I think climbing is critical for any game that wants to implement any sort of thief gameplay. But, yes, I would walk the map quite happily if I could get everything else except the vehicles. note that driveable vehicles could also be animals or flying carpets in different world builds.

Keep dreaming. This is InXile we are talking about, not Obsidian. My dream died when Halo sold a billion copies.

I could really use a crpg with a good story, interesting NPCS, rich world to explore, lots of cool stuff to find, actions that have consquences, interesting combat, climbing, driveable vehicles, huge map, versatile and enjoyable character development...

I, personally, see a lot of resemblances between the Big Daddy and a Golem. Golems though powerful, were vulnerable to certain things and were also at times capable of unexpected complexitiies. Were I the writer of Bioshock 2 and was ordered to do a Big Story on a Big Dadday, I woudl have gone back into history and read up on some of the myths and legends of the Golem. There is a lot of interesting material there.

lol. Once I realized that, it was the beginning of the end for me. Bioshock is the king of meaningless choices.

That kills my interest. WHatever little there was. Oh well, there is always Fallout 4.

Thanks to both of you for the quick response. I think I am going to reload and just continue playing as if I don't know where he is and then follow through on the main quest parts as the game points me to them (when I get around to them). I am quite sure, that as Tigranes said, the main story is pretty poo, but at least once through I think I would like to see it unfold in all its poopy glory. I have to say, I do enjoy listening to Three Dog. Although I can only hear him in places near to the downtown area, when I move off into locations away from the downtown he gets all staticy and then disappears. 3 Dog is actually one of my favorite things about the game. I like the music choices, too. You know, there are so many bits and pieces of this game that have potential to be expanded into something buig and interesting, but Bethesda is always in such a hurry to throw things aside and move on to the next bit. Everything feels so undeveloped, like there are lots of good stories in this world that are going untold.

Hello I posed a question in the FO3 spoiler thread that I could use some help on. I would have posted it here since I think this thread gets viewed more, but its a pretty spoilerific question. help.

Complaining about badly done consequence/karma etc in a Bethesda game is like complaing about getting wet in water. Bethesda can't do karma and/or consequence or anything related. They simply don't understand the concept. It should be obvious by now. Unlike Oblivion there are enough positives to FO3 to overlook the glaring negatives. But, I have a question for people who have played the main story:

I think it is quite silly to take a super powerful character from a previous game, give you that character to play, and then make it weak and pathetic, just to add challenge. ANd then totally destroy the concept of challenge in the first place by having rez tubes. The Big Daddy doesn't need rez tubes. The Big Daddy kicks splicers faces in. Only in the sense that I think nerfing the Big D would completely kill the only reason I would be interested in the game.

Seeing as how you usually reach level 20 after barely making it out of Vault 101, I'd say yes. But that's only my guess. I've been playing for many many hours and I am only level 8. Thank god for mods! Default Leveling rates in both Oblivion and Fallout 3 are absurd. They are so rapid that you can't even enjoy the game, it goes by so fast.

Get away! The ONLY thing that is cool about the Big Daddy is the way it stomps around and demolishes everything in sight. Turning it into some kind of fragile metrosexual would seriously suck.

I really hated the idea of playing as a Big Daddy when I first heard about it, but after reading that I think it will be kinda cool. I like the fact that they make the Little Sisters look less like demon-children now that you're looking at them as a Big Daddy. "Mr. B? Mr. B! You're okay!" There's big problem, though: they will either have to beef up the splicers or nerf the Big Daddy(you). In Bioshock a Big Daddy could kill hordes of splicers left and right, doesn't look very challenging. If the free rez tubes are still there does this matter? Just make the Big Daddy a totally overpowered force of ass-kicking and let it go to town on the splicers. More fun to me than playing a wimped out Big Daddy.

I pretty much finish every game I play but on the flip side, I don't play that many different games and I take a long time to play the ones I do play. Most recently Far cry 2 was something around 300-400 hours over quite a few months. Currently meandering about in FO3. Games that I haven't finished though: Bioshock of course recently. Older notable games would be: Fallout 2--I loved Fallout and played it to death and Fallout 2 was just too much more of the same and I eventually got tired of Fallout 2 before I finished it. Diablo 2--See Fallout 2, except with Diablo. Baldur's Gate: I tried twice, once on the initial game and ocne with the TotSC xpack, but each time hit the level cap long before I finished the game and once I hit level caps I usually stop playing. BG2: Throne of Bhaal: Bleah. Boring. SoA was good fun though. IWD2: One of my least favorite games (IWD 1 being one of my most favorite games) that became such a grind in the Ice Palace that I stopped. It's interesting that most of the games I don't finish are sequels. I guess I just get bored of the same gameplay after a while.

wow. fabulous.

How come the Fallout screenshots all come out lookin like the player got their faces dusted by an anus of a coal mine? There's a lot of incredibly weird stuff going on with skin tones in FO3. I spent some time working with different faces but after a while just gave up and took the best I could get with a small amount of work. SOme of the charcter skins in the game are bright gold, almost as much as the HIgh Elves in the ES games. I would be curious if that was intentional on Bethesda's part? Or if they just didn't do a very good job.