Slowtrain

Wait, you don't like carrying around countless teddy bears, spoons, plates, and whatnot for the junk gun? In playing FO3 again, I'm collecting Teddy Bears for my house in Megaton. And intact Garden Gnomes. Too bad its not easier to place these things. Frankly inventory management is one of those abstractions that I usually just like to roll with however the game presents it, so not a big issue to me. A totally weight based system like Fallout is just as non-realistic as playing inventory tetris with a space limit, IMO. Oh yeah, the garden gnomes. The first time I played FO3 I thought there would be seem odd yet interesting quest around those things. Never found such a quest though. Was always disappointing.

Wait, you don't like carrying around countless teddy bears, spoons, plates, and whatnot for the junk gun? The junk gun is the bestest thing in FO3!!111!! No wait. It's the dumbest. Sorry. ANyway, FO1 and 2 inventory system/management wasn't anything to write home about. All three of the STALKER games seem to fail at the end. Or at least the last bits are always the weakest parts of the game.

It's true. How cool is that.

STALKER rules on atmosphere. The FPS combat is pretty good. Level design is solid. Some of the creatures are cool, but could have been more/better in that department. FInding artifacts is interesting. But mostly it's the atmosphere. FO3 was pretty good in that regard as well. I expect the same from NV. Hopefully even better than FO3.

No need. I can sum that up for you right here: * Will there be vehicles? * We can have a house? * Will there be aliens? * (enter in some random impossible to incorporate or develop in allotted time and/or canon-breaking element here) * We can have a business? * We can have a vehicles? * We can have power armor? lol. A fine list of questions indeed. CAN I HAVE A CAT AND A PONY AND A FLOWER GARDEN AND JON BON JOVI'S BABY?

Good Luck, Matthew. You've always been very helpful and informative on the boards. (Especially given the limitations which I know you have to deal with). It is appreciated.

I'm wondering the importance of the boards since visiting a news site seems to be much more time-saving nowadays. I just drop by and leave what I thought and, there are even times when I cannot even come back to check if there are any replies to my posts. I enjoy it just to see what other gamers are saying about things. The developers are pretty much a total non-entity.

It very much used to be that way in the 90's. Yep. It was a lot different.

forget it.

You would think that a developer would actually talk about a game they are making on their own boards. But no, not this one. You'd find it to be quite common these days. Not talking about games in development, that is. PR departments rule the world, NDAs tie everybody's hands and mouths. Quite. You'd think games were actually important the way they are treated. I recall that old line from WW2: Loose lips sink ships. Of course, here were talking about a stupid video game not transporting soldiers through enemy territory during the midst of a global war. To say our priorities are slightly out of whack is probably an understatement.

That's pretty much the way it goes, isn't it?

Awesome. Great post. It's not surprising at all, of course. And it mostly doesn't bother me, other than the blatant hypocrisy of pretending to be critically and impartially reviewing games when nothing could be further from the truth. If game journalists are OK with just being shills for publishers and developers, that's fine. Just come out and say so right up front.

Yeah, I read that in the other thread. I thought it was stupid then; I think it's stupid now. I'm not arguing the validity or lack thereof of their political gripes. Everybody has poltical gripes; everybody thinks there's are more valid than everyone else's. SOP for humanity, you know. My issue is that once one accepts and validates killing in the name of an ideology, any ideology, they can't complain when others do the same. Personally, I think that applauding the death of a hundred human beings under any circumstances is pretty much not OK.

Actually, you can. And it has proven to be a fairly effective tactic. But that's irrelevant, because the Naxalites are engaged in armed resistance as part of a policy of rational self defense, rather than because they "don't like" the politics of India. If you want to give them that much credit, that's cool. In the end though it always boils down to not liking someone's politics and the way they run the show. Which is legitimate. Solving the problem with a firearm, however, is not. It's not OK when the US government does it; it's not OK when the Naxalites do it.

That's cool. But if so then there's no need to turn it on in the first place. Understand that I have no particular attachment to hardcore mode. I'll use it if it's there, but I didn't actively want it as an addition to the gameplay nor would it have entered my mind to even ask for it. But since it is there, and it is expressly labeled "hardcore", it really seems to make no sense to have people able to flick it on and off on a whim. If you want to play a hardcore-type, just becuase you want to, then go ahead and play that way. addign a swithcable hardcore mode doesn't appear to be adding anything to the game. It ap[pears mostly a silyl PR thing that gets good press but little else. If quicksave was an option and you could flick it on and off as you saw fit, it would also make no sense. It's not the option that I am objecting to, I just agree with the original thread at Bethsoft that it is a somewhat bizarre approach. To me, it just seems if playability is an issue, then the obvious choice is not to use HC mode in the first place. Save it for an additional challenge after you've done a couple playthroughs without it.

You can't blow people away because you don't like their politics. Down that road there is only chaos and death. Doesn't matter what side you are on.

I don't know.. it's true that it can be exploited, but what's the point? It's not like playing in Hardcore mode gives you any benefit, and switching it during your playthrough gives you the possibility of testing it and deciding if you like it or not without having to replay from the beginning if you find the game too easy/too hard. Well, I think the point made in the Bethsoft thread is a good one: by looking at it that way, you end up playing against yourself rather than the game. If hardcore more is switchable at any time then the point and purpose of a hardcore mode is completely defeated: what could be less hardcore than turning hardcore mode off when it got umm hard?

Interesting point on hardcore mode I would agree that hardcore should only be selectable on starting a new game. ALso, like Fallout Tactics it might be interesting if playing that way awarded an additional XP percentage. Of course, if skill points are still way to plentiful, then additonal XP is pretty much irrelevant anyway. And yes, its true, I've been reduced to visiting the Bethsoft forums to get any news and thoughts on FO:NV Sad, innit?

While its true that there is a lot of bad beer in the US (and people who drink it), the microbrew business is huge as well. I can walk down the street to the grocery store and have my choice of such a huge variety of US beer brewed by small companies all ovber the country that the stereotype of the American who has 0 taste in beer is now somewhat dated.

Don't we all ready know that FO:NV is going to be just like FO3, except with hardcore mode and maybe some two and three syllable words. It's not a big secret. The hush-hush is ridiculous.

Obviously nothing, since pretty much every question goes unanswered. I recognize that Obs is most likely under strict orders from Beth to stfu and since Beth is paying the bills, Obs doesn't have much of a choice. *shrugs* It would be nice though.

Small text is much prferable to big text though. It looks neater and takes up less of the screen and more words fit on the screen at once. Most games these days have this insane giant text that looks like something out of an EZ-Reader book. I dislike it personally.

It's not Oblivion bad, no. It may not even be Lands of Lore 3 bad. But imo it's not comparable to anything made by BIS or Obsidian.

You would think that a developer would actually talk about a game they are making on their own boards. But no, not this one.

Not the whole thing, no.