Slowtrain

Good call. EA is the worst. Only James Bond can stop them now.

Thou honors us with such praise, fair maiden. The glorious and ever vigilant Knights of the Codex

And it's been disproved repeatedly as well. It may not, but even if the site convinces just one person to decide for and by himself/herself not to buy the game an accomplishment has been made. And there's no reason to believe that Bethesda's PR hype will be any better. Just look at some of the Oblivion pre-release interviews. No, it was created out of the desire to fight instead of simply giving up and letting Bethesda ruin the third installation of a great franchise. BTW, just out of curiosity, as a fellow MOO1&2 fan, did you also like MOO3 and did you suggest to any of your friends to buy it? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I'm touched to know you are all looking out for my welfare in saving me from the horrible Betehsda PR machine. Such altruism is rare indeed

No it doesn't. A single game generally needs to be internally consistent to itself, has to set rules and conditions that are predictable so that the gamer understands how the gameworld reacts to what she does, but even that is not a hard and fast rule. Inconsistency between totally different games is pretty much irrelevant. A lot of people play game 2 or 3 in a series without ever playing one that came before. WHy should they care about a consistency between the game they are plaing and early games that they have never even heard of?

the little easter egg encounters weren't as bothersome. They were fairly isolated and didn't impact the "real" game much. I was never a big fan of them though and mostly just ignored them. I recognize a lot of people enjoyed the mini-game aspect of tracking them down and experiencing them. It wouldn't bother me if they were in or out of FO 3.

I could care less if its true to the Fallout "canon". Whatever. Its a game. As long as its internally consistent enough that I'm not sitting there scratching my head and trying to figure out how the gameworld is reacting then I don't care if the deathclaws are hairy, wear lounge jackets and smoke stogies. ALso the cheesy humor is mostly a Fallout 2 device and for me personally was one of the reasons I didn't enjoy it as much as Fallout 1. Having Cassidy say "I am the master, now you are the learner" while he is popping someone with a sniper rifle kind of kills the mood of the gameworld. edit: Was that Cassidy or Lenny who says that? Can't remember now. Its still stupid.

Actually I'd rather kiss the ground that Julian LeFay walked on since I think he did a better job as the lead designer of the ES games. But Todd Howard has done a pretty decent job in a lot of areas. I look forward to seeing more of his and his teams work.

I do! Not that Moo3 was great, but it wasn't bad once you got it patched so that most things worked. Moo2 wasn't nearly as good as Moo either, so I can't hold that against it. I guess I just don't have the same reverence for the name Fallout as some people. Fallout 3 will stand or fall on its own as a good game or not. The quality of Fallout has no effect on the quality of Fallout 3.

Fallout 3 by Bethsoft is one of the very few software titles I am looking forward to. Obviously I am not as savy and discerning a gamer as all those NMA and Codex boys. And I am also easily manipulated by the Bethsoft PR machine. I'm glad those fallout boys are so bent on trying to save me from myself.

Tetris. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> developed by a Russian?

What does the "spirit of Fallout" mean? I followed Fallout all through development and bought it the day it was released and played it for umpeen thousands of hours, but I still couldn't tell you what the "spirit of Fallout" is. That seems way too subjective a thing to use to define or measure the quality of a game.

eh, its not meant to be condescending. I've been reading your post for years and am pretty familair with your take on things. I repect youe feelings about games and always have. Alls I'm saying is that FO 3 may be completely different but still really good. You are of course entitled to think otherwise.

The world turns. Life changes. IPs are sold. A new company interprets things in different ways. What was once Fallout may not be exactly the same anymore. *shrugs* I never found anyway to stop that sort of thing from happening.

no you are talking about Fallout. Everyone else is talking about Fallout 3. Get out of the past, child.

What the hell is a casual game? Something I play for a few minutes while taking a poo? This must be opposed to a formal game like um one that is in a tuxedo or something.

If you love stealthing and climbing rope ladders and backstabbing by all means, all three thiefs are awesome. You should note however that you play Garrett who is a thief not an assassin and is neither tough nor strong. You can be pretty lethal when attacking from hiding either with bow or sword, but you have almost no chance head to head. If you practice enough with the sword you can get pretty good at blocking attacks, but you are still a wimpy thief. On the highest difficulty level, you are generally forbidden from killing anybody.

well, if Bethsoft doesn't screw it up, they've obviously got an IP that could make them some money.

Lobstermen are insanely difficult to kill until you can research and build the vibroblade, thermic lance, and heavy TL. Then its lobster soup for everyone! I've found the best way to take them down before then is surround one with a bunch of aquanauts armed with gauss rifles and autofire the lobsterman into unconsciousness. Even though the sonic weapons are more powerful, they don't have autofire capability. Even the super powerful but incredibly slow sonic cannon takes several shots to drop a lobsterman. If you can get a line of fire, several snipers armed with sonic canons using aimed shot can pop a lobsterman from long range. That can be a tough situation to setup though. Molecular control attacks can also be useful once you get it researched and some of your aquanauts trained. Don't even bother with the disruptor pulse launcher. I've seen lobsterman withstand three or four direct hits. Their resistance to explosive damage is through the roof.

I think one has to at least wait until some of the features and mechanics have been released by the devs. If we get official info that FO 3 is not going to have any dialogue, no world map, no SPECIAL, and will have linear missions, then we can get into the doomsaying. But until there is official word there's no point on wasting time being all gloom and doom about what may be bad in FO3.

If those are your three main problems you don't really have much to complain about. My main problems with Oblivion are: 1) Skill development system that encourages metagaming rather than roleplaying 2) Skill development system that makes all player characters more similar as they develop rather than less similar 3) Scaling that creates an intenal inconsistency with the gameworld: Bandits have weapons and armor they couldn't possibly have. I would hope all those would be addressed in FO, but I have my doubts that will be the case. Still that is not enough to make Oblivion unfun, nor would it be enough to make FO 3 unfun.

I suck at dropkicking.

Wait, you can't agree with me. I was agreeing with you!

*dropkicks meta*

Oblivion is fab! It has its problems, but the good things it does makes up, way way way up, for those. I've been playing it pretty consistently for almost what nine months now? I think the expansion is going to be pretty good too from what additional info I've read since the original word got out.

I'm definitely not big on the artisitic look of the gameworld from what I've seen so far, but that is hardly a gamebreaker. The look they are going for with world is a mechanical one: pumps, pulleys, pistons, and gears; no transistors or miniaturization. So that that point of view, the art is internally consistent with the gameworld, which is more important than realistic.