Slowtrain

Hmmm. Maybe we should push for a return of Oblivion's Magic Wheel o' Speaking. Or was it a pie chart rather than a wheel? Anyway, it was a high point for the game.

No mutiplayer in Deus Ex 3 Though it doesn't mean the game will be good, it's promising that the decison was made.

Last I heard, about a year or two ago, was that everything was completely dead in the water as regards either JA 3 or JA 3d. Is that no loner the case?

That's somehow so utterly appropriate.

Maybe we could have some kind of uber-parakeet. That way, it could talk to you during your travels, then go beserk in combat and claw the eyes out of Behmoths and deathclaws. While taunting them. WIth coarse language.

The best thing about the Broken Steel DLC was that it made Dogmeat into a freaking engine of death. Watching him solo Overlords was awesome. Realistic? No. Fun? Yes. Also, lovely not to have to worry about him. Where's Dogmeat? Of he's around the corner wiping out a few supermutant masters. No problem. I'll just keep going he'll ctahc up when he's finished. That was a nice change from the original version of Dogmeat in the vanilla FO3.

Like it would be possible to actually write worse npcs than Bethesda comes up with... Yeah, it's Bethesda's huge weakness. They have others as well of course, but this is the biggie: actually making the gameworld feel like it's filled with people, not just poorly written dialogue scripts. That being said Fallout 3 was a gigantinormous step forward from the NPC horror of Oblivion. Plus: this is Obs not Beth doing the writing. Improvement in this area is practicvally guaranteed.

Waterworld. lol.

Actually, I think FO3 is the most "non-sensical" of Bethesda's crpgs that I've played. Their ES ganes are generally pretty straight forward fantasy world. Even Oblivion had fields and farms and cities and what not. I think Beth pretty much intentionally went for the super-ridiculous approach with FO3. And that's not a criticism of Bethesda. FO2, for example, was just as ludicrous, if not even more so. FO1, otoh, was, I think, a more more straightforward attempt to to create a post-apoc world with less silliness. But it still had a fair share. Overall, I think a certaan amount of ridiculousness is approriate for FO and has been a part of the IP since the beginning.

SAme reason your player character can get shot with a rocket and still keep on trucking. Ridiculous, yes, It's all part of the gameplay. Ridiculousity really isn't much of an issue in a computer game, as long as it's consistent.

Male or female. Yay! Thank you. I lost my faith for a moment. Forgive me. You actually got Josh to answer a game related question. *faints*

As long as it doesn't make me register and create an account and give up personal info to the publisher just to play a game, I'm fine with whatever DRM is used.

Ultimately, it would appear to be Sega's call on what to show and not show as far as previews go anyway. They appear to be handling pretty much all aspects of the game's release and have Obs pretty much 100% under thumb.

I would agree that huge gaping chunks of FO3 make no sense, but it doesn't bother me. Most games make little or no sense, if you actually stop to think about them. As long as the gameplay works, its all good.

While that's certainly a possibility, I doubt it'll get that bleak. A more likely scenario may involve subscriptions giving you access to a pool of games, with extra fees (lower than the present

Well, even though I think it unlikely, if NV has a really dynamic world that changes a lot when you are not around, then it becomes a must buy for me. Adding that kind of dynamism to an already interesting, though static, FO3 world would be fabulous.

I agree that it hasn't happened yet, that appears to be the direction in which publishers are headed. It is far and away the route that makes the most financial sense. @Raithe: Yep, ideally, from a publishers POV, a game would be something that you don't actually purchase but merely pay to use. I paid for FO3 once, but I played it for months on and off. Publishers want that money that months and months of play generates. Additionally, by providing games as a service not a product, publishers get to minimize or even outright eliminate both the retailer and the need to even provide a physical product and distribitution network. All my monies will belong to them.

I think the point of DR is to control the legit customer and get as much money as possible from them by making their game product a service that has to be paid for on an ongoing basis rather than aa a one time purchase. basically, apply the mmorpg payment model to single player games. It would be a much more stable and productuve revenue stream, especially without the additional cost of having to maintain a mmorpg environment. If it fights piracy as a side effect, that's great, but I don't believe such is the primary purpose. Pirates are, for the most part, not goign to pay anyway. It's the legit customer that yoy need to target and get as much money as possible from, since they have already shown that they will pay.

JE doesn't say very much anymore. Whether because of his Alien crpg experience or because Bethesda has everyone on the short leash or whatever, who knows. But these days were lucky to get a "boo!" from him. Or anyone else.

This sort of dynamic world would be great and really aide the sandbox-style of gaming as far as keeping the world interesting. I think it is extraordinarily unlikely that it will be implemented to any sort of degree. Much more likely to see a continutation of the level-scaled, but static, spawns of FO3.

Has this been confirned as a bug/flaw? It seems possibly more a game balance way of keeping the pc from running amok and killing everyone in the game without opposition. Albeit, not a very good method.

I still have my preorder. It will be more than a year old when the game finally comes out. At this point my enthusiasm is pretty minimal. I find it difficult to maintain any degree of excitement for more than a year. I really hope the game does well for Obsidian, but I personally won't be hustling down to Gamestop to cash in my preorder the day of release.

How come it isn't all vomit green and mud brown? Those are FO3's staple colors.

A game that short has to be brilliant to be worth more than a handful of change and some pocket lint. Linear monster mashes don't cut it.

There's lot of threads on repeated or semi-repeated issues. Discussions move forward and new threads get started. Many of the issues remain the same, but that's OK, isn't it? I agree. That's very possible. Which is why I asked some of the questions that I did earlier. It's part of the discussion. People bring up different points based on the issues that are important to them. FOr me, personally, forced on-line connectivity during single-player gameplay isn't a deal-breaker, but it is annoying. ANd it does raise issues about how far are we as consumers going to allow game companies (and others) to monitor our on-going activities for whatever unknown purpose. Is this really an anti-piracy issue? I have my doubts. I don't think DRM has been about combatting piracy for some time now.